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(MODERN WOMEN 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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AURA M.'HAN 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SIX MODERN WOMEN 



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SIX 
MODERN WOMEN 

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BY 



LAURA MARHOLM HANSSON 



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BOSTON 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1896 



Copyright, 1896, 
By Roberts Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 




John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



It is not my purpose to contribute to the study 
of woman's intellectual life, or to discuss her 
capacity for artistic production, although these six 
women are in a manner representative of woman's 
intellect and woman's creative faculty. I have 
little to do with Marie Bashkirtseff 's pictures in 
the Luxembourg, Sonia Kovalevsky's doctor's de- 
gree and Prix Bordin, Anne Charlotte Edgren- 
Leffler's stories and social dramas, Eleonora Duse's 
success as a tragedian in both worlds, and with all 
that has made their names famous and is publicly 
known about them. There is only one point which 
I should like to emphasize in these six types of 
modern womanhood, and that is the manifestation 
of their womanly feelings. I want to show how 
it asserts itself in spite of everything, — in spite of 
the theories on which they built up their lives, 
in spite of the opinions of which they were the 



vi Preface 

teachers, and in spite of the success which crowned 
their efforts, and bound them by stronger chains 
than might have been the case had their lives been 
passed in obscurity. They were out of harmony 
with themselves, suffering from a conflict which 
made its first appearance in the world when the 
" woman question " came to the fore, causing an 
unnatural breach between the needs of the intellect 
and the requirements of their womanly nature. 
Most of them succumbed in the struggle. 

A woman who seeks freedom by means of the 
modern method of independence is generally one 
who desires to escape from a woman's sufferings. 
She is anxious to avoid subjection, also mother- 
hood, and the dependence and impersonality of 
an ordinary woman's life ; but in doing so she un- 
consciously deprives herself of her womanliness. 
For them all — for Marie Bashkirtseff as much as 
Sonia Kovalevsky and A. C. Edgren-Leffler — 
the day came when they found themselves stand- 
ing at the door of the heart's innermost sanctuary, 
and realized that they were excluded. Some of 
them burst open the door, entered, and became 
man's once more. Others remained outside and 
died there. They were all individualistic, these 



Preface vii 

six women. It was this fact that moulded their 
destiny; but Eleonora Duse was the only one of 
them who was- individualistic enough. None of 
them were able to stand alone, as more than one 
had believed that she could. The women of our 
day are difficult in the choice of a husband, and 
the men are slow and mistrustful in their search 
for a wife. 

There are some hidden peculiarities in woman's 
soul which I have traced in the lives of these 
six representative women, and I have written 
them down for the benefit of those who have 
not had the opportunity of discovering them for 
themselves. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction xi 

I. The Learned Woman : Sonia Kovalevsky . 3 

II. Neurotic Keynotes: George Egerton . . 61 

III. The Modern Woman on the Stage: Eleo- 

nora Duse 97 

IV. The Woman Naturalist: Amalie Skram . 131 
V. A Young Girl's Tragedy: Marie Bash- 

KIRTSEFF 147 

VI. The Woman's Rights Woman: A. Ch. 

Edgren-Leffler 185 



INTRODUCTION 



The subjects of these six psychological sketches 
are well known to English readers, with the 
exception of Amalie Skram, the Norwegian 
novelist, and Fru Leffler, who is known only as 
the biographer of Sonia Kovalevsky. 

Laura Marholm, the writer of this book, is a 
German authoress of Norwegian extraction, who 
is celebrated for her literary criticisms and the 
beauty of her style. In September, 1889, she 
married Ola Hansson, the Swedish author of 
"Sensitiva Amorosa," "Young Scandinavia," and 
a novel called "Fru Esther Bruce," in which the 
heroine is said to bear a strong resemblance to 
Eleonora Duse. He has also published a volume 
of prose poems, called " Ofeg's Ditties," which 
has been translated by George Egerton, whose 
vivid style and powerful descriptions have gained 
a place for her among the foremost women writers 
of the day. 

Laura Marholm was the first to introduce her 
husband to the German public by means of two 
articles in the Neue Freie Presse. The first, 
called "A Swedish Love Poet," appeared May 



xii Introduction 

24th, 1888, before they had met, and was written 
in praise of his early work, " Sensitiva Amorosa." 
The second article was a criticism on "Pariahs," 
and it is an interesting fact that in it she com- 
pares him to Gottfried Keller. 

In all her writings, Laura Marholm looks at 
life through the spectacles of a happy marriage; 
she believes that matured thought and widened 
views can — in a woman's case — be only the 
direct result of marriage; and consequently she 
considers marriage to be absolutely indispensable 
to every woman, and that without it she is both 
mentally and morally undeveloped. She has little 
sympathy with the Woman's Rights movement, 
judged either from the social, political, or edu- 
cational point of view ; with regard to the latter, 
she has not had a university education herself, 
and she is not at all impressed by those who have. 
She considers that a woman's individuality is of 
greater importance than her actions ; she upholds 
woman's influence as woman, and has no sympathy 
with the advanced thinkers, who, with Stuart Mill 
at their head, would fain have women exert their 
influence as thinking, reasoning human beings, 
believing all other influence to be unworthy the, 
dignity of the modern woman. Laura Marholm 
has the intuitive faculty, and this enables her to 
gauge the feelings of those women who spend a 
long youth in waiting — who are taught to believe, 
and who do believe, that their youth is nothing 



Introduction xiii 

more than a transition period between childhood 
and marriage, — women who grow old in waiting, 
and awake to reality to find behind them nothing 
but a wasted youth, and in the future — an empty 
old age. But these are not modern women, they 
are the women of the ancien regime, who have 
missed their vocation, and failed to attain their 
sole object in life, — viz., marriage. On the one 
hand we are confronted with the old-fashioned 
girl, on the other by the new woman. Of the 
two, we prefer the new woman ; and while recog- 
nizing her mistakes, and lamenting her exag- 
gerated views, Laura Marholm acknowledges that 
she is formed of the best material of the age, and 
prophesies for her a brighter future. But her 
views differ greatly from those of Ibsen and 
Bjornson. According to Ibsen, a woman is first 
of all a human being, and then a woman; she 
places the woman first, the human being last. 
Bjornson believes that an intellectually developed 
woman with a life-work can get on very well 
by herself; Laura Marholm maintains that, apart 
from man, a woman is nothing. According to 
her, woman is a creature of instinct, and this 
instinct is her most precious possession, and of 
far greater value than the intellect Of all the 
studies in this book, Fru Leffler is probably the 
one with whom she is least in sympathy. Fru 
Lefrler was essentially intellectual, possessed of 
a somewhat cold and critical temperament, and in 



xiv Introduction 

writing the biography of Sonia Kovalevsky she 
was often unable to appreciate the latter' s very 
complicated character. Sonia was a rare com- 
bination of the mystic and the scientist ; she was 
not only a mathematician, but also, in every im- 
portant crisis of her life, a dreamer of prophetic 
dreams. The biography was intended to be the 
continuation of Sonia' s own story of her child- 
hood, and the two should be read together. As 
a child, Sonia suffered from a painful conviction 
that in her family she was not the favorite, and 
it is probable that her unaccountable shyness, 
her want of self-confidence, and her inability to 
attract love in after life, were due to the fact 
of her having passed an unhappy and unloved 
childhood. 

Fru LefHer's writings are remarkable for the 
simplicity and directness of her style, her keen 
observation, and love of truth. Her talents were 
by no means confined to her pen; she held a 
salon, — the resort of the intellectual world of 
Stockholm, — and attained great popularity by her 
tactfulness and social gifts. She did not, how- 
ever, shine in society to the same extent as Sonia 
Kovalevsky. Her conversation was not as bril- 
liant and witty as the latter' s, but it was always 
interesting, and it was of the kind that is remem- 
bered long afterwards. " When she told a story, 
analyzed a psychological problem, or recounted 
the contents of a book, she always succeeded in 



Introduction xv 

setting forth its real character in a clear and 
decided manner." Sonia,. on the other hand, was 
ever ready with an original remark. Ellen Key 
tells how one day, when the conversation turned 
upon love, Sonia exclaimed: "These amiable 
young men are always writing books about love, 
and they do not even know that some people have 
a genius for loving, just as others have a genius 
for music and mechanics, and that for these 
erotic geniuses love is a matter of life and death, 
whereas for others it is only an episode. " 

Fru Leffler travelled a great deal, and made 
many friends in the countries that she visited. 
She took great interest in socialism, anarchism, 
and all religious and educational movements. In 
London she attended lectures given by Mrs. Marx- 
Aveling, Bradlaugh, and Mrs. Besant. Theos- 
ophy, positivism, spiritualism, and atheism, — 
there was nothing which did not interest her. 
The more she saw the more she doubted the pos- 
sibility of attaining to absolute truth in matters 
either social or religious, and the more attracted 
she became by the doctrine of evolution. 

From this authoress, who was the chief exponent 
of woman's rights in Sweden, we turn to a very 
different but no less interesting type. Eleonora 
Duse, the great Italian actress, has visited Lon- 
don during the past few years, acting in such a 
natural, and at the same time in such a simple 
and life-like manner, that a knowledge of the 



xvi Introduction 

language was not absolutely indispensable to the 
enjoyment of the piece. Besides most of the 
pieces mentioned here, she acted in La Femme de 
Claude ■, Cleopatra, and Martha; but she attained 
her greatest triumph in Goldoni's comedy, La 
Locandiera. 

In all these typical women, Fru L. Marholm 
Hansson traces a likeness which proves that they 
have something in common. Numerous and con- 
flicting as are the various opinions on the so-called 
"woman question," the best, and perhaps the only, 
way of elucidating it is by doing as she has done 
in giving us these sketches. We have here six 
modern women belonging to five nationalities, 
three of whom are authoresses, and the other 
three — mathematician, actress, and artist, por- 
trayed and criticised by one who is herself a 
modern woman and an authoress. 

H. R. 



The Learned IVoman 



I 

It sometimes happens that a hidden characteristic 
of the age is disclosed, not through any acuteness 
on the part of the spectator, nor as the result of 
critical research, but of itself, as it were, and 
spontaneously. A worn face rises before us, bear- 
ing the marks of death, and never again may we 
gaze into the eyes which reveal the deep psycho- 
logical life of the soul. It is the dead who greet 
us, the dead who survive us, and who will come 
to life again and again in future generations, long 
after we have ceased to be ; those dead who will be- 
come the living, only to suffer and to die again. 

These self-revelations have always existed 
amongst men, but among women they were un- 
known until now, when this tired century is draw- 
ing to its close. It is one of the strangest signs 
of the coming age that woman has attained to the 
intellectual consciousness of herself as woman, and 
can say what she is, what she wishes, and what she 
longs for. But she pays for this knowledge with 
her death. 

Marie Bashkirtseff's Journal was just such a 
self -revelation as this ; the moment it appeared it 
was carried throughout the whole of Europe, and 






4 Six Modern Women 

further than Europe, on far-reaching waves of 
human sympathy. Wherever it went it threw a 
firebrand into the women's hearts, which set them 
burning without most of them knowing what this 
burning betokened. They read the book with a 
strange and painful emotion, for as they turned 
over these pages so full of ardent energy, tears, 
and yearning, they beheld their own selves, 
strange, beautiful, and exalted, but still them- 
selves, though few of them could have explained 
why or wherefore. 

It was no bitter struggle with the outer world to 
which Marie Bashkirtseff succumbed at the age of 
four-and-twenty ; it was not the struggle of a girl 
of the middle classes for her daily bread, for which 
she sacrifices her youth and spirits ; she met with 
no obstacles beyond the traditional customs which 
had become to her a second nature, no obstruction 
greater than the atmosphere of the age in which 
she lived, which bounded her own horizon, although 
in her inmost soul she rebelled against it. She 
had everything that the world can give to assist 
the unhindered development of the inner life, — 
mental, spiritual, and physical; everything that 
hundreds of thousands of women, whose narrow 
lives need expanding, have not got, ■ — and yet she 
did not live her life. On every one of the six 
hundred pages of her journal (written, as it is, in 
her penetrating Russian-French style) we meet 
the despairing cry that she had nothing, that she 
was ever alone in the midst of an everlasting void, 



The Learned Woman 5 

hungering at the table of life, spread for every 
one except herself, standing with hands out- 
stretched as the days passed by and gave her noth- 
ing; youth and health were fading fast, the grave 
was yawning, just a little chink, then wider and 
wider, and she must go down without having had 
anything but work, — constant work, — trouble and 
striving, and the empty fame which gives a stone 
in the place of bread. 

The tired and discontented women of the time 
recognized themselves on every page, and for many 
of them Marie Bashkirtseff's Journal became a 
kind of secret Bible in which they read a few sen- 
tences every morning, or at night before going to 
sleep. 

A few years later there appeared another con- 
fession by a woman; this time it was not an 
autobiography, like the last one, but it was written 
by a friend, who was a European celebrity, with a 
name as lasting as her own. This book was called 
" Sonia Kovalevsky : Our Mutual Experiences, 
and the things she told me about herself. " The 
writer was Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess 
of Cajanello, who had been her daily companion 
during years of friendship. 

There was a curious likeness between Marie 
Bashkirtseff's Journal and Sonia Kovalevsky' s 
confessions, something in their innermost, per- 
sonal experiences which proves an identity of tem- 
perament as well as of fortune, something which 



6 Six Modern Women 

was not only due to the unconscious manner in 
which they criticised life, but to life itself, life 
as they moulded it, and as each was destined to 
live it. Marie Bashkirtseff and Sonia Kovalevsky 
were both Russians, 1 both descended from rich 
and noble families, both women of genius, and 
from their earliest childhood they were both in a 
position to obtain all the advantages of a good 
education. They were both born rulers, true chil- 
dren of nature, full of originality, proud and inde- 
pendent. In all respects they were the favorites 
of fortune, and yet — and yet neither of these 
extraordinary women was satisfied, and they died 
because they could not be satisfied. Is not this a 
sign of the times ? 



II 

The story of Sonia Kovalevsky' s life reads like 
an exciting novel, which is, if anything, too richly 
furnished with strange events. Such is life. It 
comes with hands full to its chosen ones, but it 
also takes away gifts more priceless than it gave. 

At the age of eighteen Sonia Kovalevsky was 
already the mistress of her own fate. She had 
married the husband of her choice, and he had 
accompanied her to Heidelberg, where they both 

1 Sonia's mother was a German, the daughter of Schubert the 
astronomer. Marie Bashkirtseff's grandmother was also German, 
and Fru Leffler was descended from a German family who had 
settled in Sweden. 



The Learned Woman 7 

matriculated at the university. From thence he 
took her to Berlin, where she lived with a girl 
friend, who was a student like herself, and studied 
mathematics at Weierstrass's for the space of four 
years, only meeting her husband occasionally in 
the course of her walks. Her marriage with 
Valdemar Kovalevsky, afterwards Professor of 
Paleontology at the university of Moscow, was a 
mere formality, and this extraordinary circum^ 
stance brings us face to face with one of the chief 
characteristics of her nature. 

Sonia Kovalevsky did not love her husband; 
there was, in fact, nothing in her early youth to 
which she was less disposed than love. She was 
possessed of an immense undefined thirst, which 
was something more than a thirst for study, albeit 
that was the form which it took. Her inexperi- 
enced, child-like nature was weighed down beneath 
the burden of an exceptional talent. 

Sonia Krukovsky was the daughter of General 
Krukovsky of Palibino, a French Grand-seigneur 
of old family; and when she was no more than 
sixteen, she had in her the making of a great 
mathematician and a great authoress. She was 
fully aware of the first, but of the latter she knew 
nothing, for a woman's literary talent nearly always 
dates its origin from her experience of life. She 
was high-spirited and enterprising, — qualities 
which are more often found among the Sclavonic 
women than any other race of Europeans ; she had 
that peculiar consciousness of the shortness of life, 



8 Six Modern Women 

the same which drove Marie Bashkirtseff to accom- 
plish more in the course of a few years than most 
people would have achieved during the course of 
their whole existence. 

Sonia Kovalevsky's girlhood was spent in 
Russia, during those years of feverish excitement 
when the outbreaks of the Nihilists bore witness 
to the working of a subterranean volcano, and the 
hearts and intellects of the young glowed with an 
enthusiasm which led to the self-annihilating deeds 
of fanaticism. A few winter months spent at St. 
Petersburg decided the fate of Sonia and her elder 
sister, Anjuta. The strict, old-fashioned notions 
of their family allowed them very little liberty, 
and they longed for independence. In order to 
escape from parental authority, a formal marriage 
was at this time a very favorite expedient among 
young girls in Russia. A silent but widespread 
antagonism reigned in all circles between the old 
and young ; the latter treated one another as secret 
allies, who by a look or pressure of the hand could 
make themselves understood. It was not at all 
uncommon for a girl to propose a formal marriage 
to a young man, generally with the purpose of 
studying abroad, as this was the only means by 
which they could obtain the consent of their un- 
suspecting parents to undertake the journey. 
When they were abroad, they generally released 
each other from all claims and separated, in order 
to study apart. Sonia' s sister was anxious to 
escape in this way, as she possessed a remarkable 



The Learned Woman 9 

literary talent which her father had forbidden her 
to exercise. She accordingly made the proposal 
in question to a young student of good family, 
named Valdemar Kovalevsky; he, however, pre- 
ferred Sonia, and this gave rise to further com- 
plications, as their father refused to allow the 
younger sister to marry before the elder. 

Sonia resorted to a stratagem, and one evening, 
when her parents were giving a reception, she 
went secretly to Valdemar, and as soon as her 
absence was discovered she sent a note to her 
father, with these words : " I am with Valdemar ; 
do not oppose our marriage any longer." There 
remained no alternative for General Krukovsky 
but to fetch his daughter home as speedily as 
possible, and to announce her engagement. 

They were accompanied on their honeymoon by 
a girl friend, who was equally imbued with the 
desire to study, and soon afterwards Anjuta joined 
them. The first thing that Sonia and Valdemar 
did was to visit George Eliot in London; after 
which Valdemar went to Jena and Munich, while 
Sonia, with her sister and friend, studied at Heidel- 
berg, where they remained during two terms before 
going to Berlin. The sister went secretly to Paris 
by herself. 

Arrived at Berlin, Sonia buried herself in her 
work. She saw no one except Professor Weier- 
strass, who expressed the greatest admiration for 
her quickness at mathematics, and did all in his 
power to assist her by means of private lessons. 



io Six Modern W 'omen 

If we are honest enough to call it by its true 
name, we must confess. that the life led by these 
two girls, during eight terms, was the life of a 
dog. Sonia scarcely ever went out of doors unless 
Valdemar fetched her for a walk, which was not 
often, as he lived in another part of the town, and 
was constantly away. She was tormented with a 
vague fear of exposing herself. Inexperienced as 
both these friends were, they lived poorly, and ate 
little, allowing themselves no pleasure of any 
sort, added to which they were tyrannized over and 
cheated by their maid-servant. Sonia sat all day 
long at her writing-table, hard at work with her 
mathematical exercises ; and when she took a short 
rest, it was only to run up and down the room, 
talking aloud to herself, with her brains as busy as 
ever. She had never been accustomed to do any- 
thing for herself; she had always been waited 
upon, and it was impossible to persuade her even 
to buy a dress when necessary, unless Valdemar 
accompanied her. But Valdemar soon tired of 
rendering these unrequited services, and he often 
absented himself in other towns for the completion 
of his own studies ; and as they both received an 
abundant supply of money from their respective 
homes, they were in no way dependent upon each 
other. 

The year 1 870 came and went ; for Sonia it had 
been a year of study, and nothing more. Her 
sleep had become shorter and more broken, and 
she neither knew nor cared what she ate, when 



The Learned Woman n 

suddenly, in the spring of the following year, 
she was sent for by her sister in Paris. Anjuta 
had fallen passionately in love with a young 
Parisian, who was a member of the Commune ; he 
had just been arrested, and was in danger of losing 
his life. Sonia and Valdemar succeeded in pene- 
trating through the line of troops, found Anjuta, 
and wrote to their father. General Krukovsky came 
at once, and it was only then that he discovered 
what his daughters were doing abroad, and learned 
for the first time that his eldest daughter had been 
living alone in Paris, for Anjuta had always been 
careful to send her letters through Sonia, with the 
Berlin postmark. 

Anjuta showed great spirit, and after an inter- 
view with Thiers they succeeded in helping this 
very undesirable son-in-law to escape. Through- 
out the whole affair their father's behavior is a 
rare proof of the nobility of the race from which 
Sonia sprang. This stern man not only forgave 
— he also admired his daughters for what they 
had done. The cold manner and grandfatherly 
authority with which he had hitherto treated them 
was superseded by a cordial sympathy such as 
would have been impossible before. He was much 
impressed by Anjuta' s passion, but Sonia' s platonic 
marriage distressed him greatly. 

In the year 1874 Sonia took the degree of doctor 
at Gottingen, as the result of three mathematical 
treatises, of which one especially, her thesis " On 
the Theory of Partial Differential Equations," is 



12 Six Modern Women 

reckoned one of her most prominent works. Imme- 
diately after this, the whole family assembled on 
the old estate of Palibino. Sonia was completely 
worn out, and it was a long time before she was 
able to resume any severe brain work. Her holi- 
day was cut short by her father's death a few 
months later, and the following winter was spent 
with her family at St. Petersburg. Until now 
Sonia's brain was the only part of her which was 
thoroughly awakened. She had been entirely 
absorbed in her studies, and had worked with the 
obstinate tenacity of auto-suggestion, more com- 
monly found in women, especially girls, than in 
men. Marie Bashkirtseff had done the same, year 
in, year out; she had worked breathlessly, fever- 
ishly, with an incomprehensible, unwearied power 
of production, — while failing health was announ- 
cing the approach of death in her frail young body. 
Suddenly the end came. 

Thousands of girls in middle-class families work 
themselves to death in the same way. Badly paid 
to begin with, they lower the prices still more by 
competing with one another. Others, placed in 
better circumstances, work with the same insist- 
ency at useless handicrafts, while a large number 
of women of the poorer classes work because they 
are driven to it by dire necessity. The result is 
the same in all cases; they lose the power of 
enjoyment, and forget what happiness means. 

Sonia's stay in St. Petersburg was the occasion 
of the first great change which took place in her, 



The Learned Woman 13 

to be followed later on by many like changes. 
Mathematics were thrust aside; she did not want 
to hear any more about them, she wanted to forget 
them. 

Mind and body were undergoing a healing 
process, struggling to attain an even balance in 
her fresh young nature. She felt the need of 
change, she required companionship, and she threw 
herself into the midst of all social and intellectual 
pursuits. It was then that the woman awoke in 
her. 

During the period of nervous excitement and 
sorrow which followed after the death of her 
beloved father, she had become the wife of her 
husband, after having been nominally married for 
nearly seven years. Since then they had drawn 
closer to one another ; and now that her fortune, 
as long as her mother lived, was not sufficient for 
her support, she and Valdemar invested their 
money in various speculations. With true Russian 
enthusiasm they set to work building houses, 
establishing watering-places, and starting news- 
papers, besides lending their aid to every imagi- 
nable kind of new invention. The first year all 
went well, and in 1878 a daughter was born. 
After that came the crash. Kovalevsky was bitten 
with the rage for speculation, and although he was 
nominated Professor of Paleontology at Moscow in 
1880, and in spite of all that his wife could do to 
dissuade him, he took shares in a company con- 
nected with petroleum springs in the south of 



14 Six Modem Women 

Russia. The company was a swindle, the under- 
taking proved a failure, and he shot himself. 

Sonia had left him some time before. She knew 
what was coming, having been warned by bad 
dreams and presentiments, and as she had lost her 
influence over him, and was anxious to provide for 
her own and her child's future, she left him and 
went to Paris. Just as she was recovering from 
the nervous fever to which she succumbed on hear- 
ing the news of her husband's sudden death, she 
received the summons to go to Stockholm. 

The invitation had been sent by the representa- 
tives of a Woman's Rights movement which was 
then in full swing. It was an exceedingly narrow 
society of the genuine bourgeois kind, and as it 
was to them that she owed her appointment, they 
were anxious to bind her firmly to their cause. 
Sonia soon won their hearts by the sociability of 
her Russian nature, but as one term after the other 
passed by, she grew more and more weary of it, and 
whenever her course of lectures was over she hur- 
ried away as quickly as possible to Russia, Italy, 
France, England, — no matter where, if only she 
could escape out of Sweden into a freer atmosphere. 
She never looked upon her stay there as anything 
more than an episode in her life, and she longed 
to be back in Paris ; but the years passed by, and 
she received no other appointment. 

Her lectures at the university began to pall upon 
her ; it gave her no pleasure to be forever teaching 
the students the same thing in a dreary routine. 



The Learned Woman 15 

She needed an incentive in the shape of some 
highly gifted individual whom she could respect, 
and whose presence would call forth her highest 
faculties ; but even the esteem in which she held 
some few people was not of long duration. 

Her friendship with Fru Edgren-Leffler dates 
from this period. It was this lady's renown as an 
authoress which roused Sonia's talent for writing, 
for her life had been rich in experiences, and 
never wanting in variety until now, when, in a 
period of comparative leisure, she allowed her 
thoughts to dwell upon the past. She began by 
persuading Fru Edgren-Leffler to dramatize the 
sketches which she gave her, and "The Struggle 
for Happiness " was the first result of this col- 
laboration. But Sonia soon realized that the 
honest, simple-minded Swede was not in sympathy 
with this department of literature ; so she wrote a 
story on her own account, entitled "The Sisters 
Rajevsky, " which was a sketch of her own youth, 
followed by an excellent novel called "Vera 
Barantzova; " after which she began another novel 
called " Vae Victis," which was never finished. 

Ill 

Up till now we have followed this remarkable 
woman's life along a clear, though somewhat 
agitated course; but from henceforward there is 
something uncomfortable, something strange and 
distorted about it. It is very difficult for us to 



1 6 Six Modern Women 

ascertain the cause of her increasing distraction of 
mind, and early death, and the difficulty is inten- 
sified by the fact that the material contributed by 
Fru Lefner is poor and contradictory, and also 
because her work is disfigured by the peculiar 
inferences which she draws. 

I have seen four portraits of Sonia Kovalevsky, 
and they are all so entirely different that no one 
would imagine that they were intended to represent 
the same person. She had none of the fascinat- 
ing, though irregular beauty of Marie Bashkirtseff, 
who carried on an artistic cult with her own per- 
son. Sonia' s powerful head, with the short hair, 
massive forehead, and short-sighted eyes of the 
color of "green gooseberries in syrup," was placed 
on a delicate child-like body. Her chief charm 
lay in her extraordinary liveliness and habit of 
giving herself up entirely to the interest of the 
moment ; but she was completely unversed in the 
art of dress, and did not know how to appear at her 
best; she never gave any thought to the subject 
at all until she was thirty ; and although she paid 
more attention to it then, she never learned the 
secret. She aged early, and a celebrated poet has 
described her to me as being a withered little old 
woman at the age of thirty. These external cir- 
cumstances stood more in her way in Sweden, 
among a tall, fair people, than would have been 
possible either in Russia or in Paris. Between 
herself and the Swedish type there was a wide gulf 
fixed, which allowed no encouragement to the 



The Learned Woman 17 

finer erotic emotions to which she was very strongly- 
disposed ; she felt crushed, and her impressionable, 
unattractive nature suffered acutely from being so 
unlike the ordinary victorious type of beauty. The 
picture of her when she was eighteen bears a strong 
resemblance to the late King Louis II. of Bavaria; 
not only are her features like his, but also the ex- 
pression in the eyes and the curve of the lips. The 
second picture dates from the year 1887. It has 
something wearied and disillusioned about it, and 
she seems to be making an effort to appear amiable. 
It was taken at the time when she was struggling 
to accustom herself to the stiff, prudish, and some- 
what pretentious ways of Stockholm society. The 
third portrait was taken at the time when she won 
the Prix Bordin in Paris, and it is a regular 
Russian face, with a much more cheerful expres- 
sion than the former ones. But in the last picture, 
taken in the year 1890, which was, to a certain 
extent, official and very much touched up, how 
ill she looks; how disappointed and how weary! 
These four portraits are, to my mind, four differ- 
ent women ; they show us what Sonia was once, 
and what she became after living for several years 
in an uncongenial atmosphere. 

Sonia Kovalevsky was a true Russian genius, 
with an elastic nature. She was lavish and care- 
less in her ways, and she thrived . best upon a torn 
sofa in an atmosphere of tea, cigarettes, and pro- 
fusion of all kinds, — intellectual, spiritual, and 
pecuniary ; she needed to be surrounded by people 



1 8 Six Modern Women 

like herself, who were in sympathy with her, and 
the inhabitants of Stockholm were never that. 
She had been torn away from the Russian sur- 
roundings in which she had lived in Berlin. She, 
who never could endure solitude, found herself 
alone among strangers, who forced themselves upon 
her, — hard, angular, women's rights women, who 
expected her to be their leader, and to fulfil a 
mission. She seldom rebelled against the duties 
which were constantly held before her eyes, partly 
because her vanity was flattered by the public 
position which she occupied, and also because her 
livelihood depended upon it, now that her private 
means were not sufficient for her support, and for 
the numerous journeys which she undertook. 

A great deal of her time was spent in travelling 
to and fro between Stockholm and St. Petersburg, 
where she went to visit Anjuta, whose marriage 
had turned out most unhappily, and who was suf- 
fering from a severe illness, of which she after- 
wards died. After her sister's death Sonia took a 
great interest in the study of Northern literature, 
which was then just beginning to attract atten- 
tion. She also wrote books, and solved some 
mathematical problems. Every time that she re- 
turned to Stockholm, after spending her holidays 
in Russia or the South, she had almost entirely 
forgotten her Swedish, and every year that passed 
by called forth fresh lamentations over her exile. 
The tone of society in Stockholm was unendurable 
to her; but she was of too disciplined a character, 



The Learned Woman 19 

and too gentle, too submissive in her loneliness, 
to rebel against it. Her life became monotonous, 
which it had never been before, and her courage 
began to give way. She yearned for sympathy, 
for excitement, for her native land, — for every- 
thing, in fact, which was denied her. 

She also longed for something else, which was 
the very thing that she could not have. She was 
seized with an eager, nervous longing to be loved. 
She wanted to be a woman, to possess a woman's 
charm. She had lived like a widow for years 
during her husband's lifetime, and for years after 
his death as well. As long as her mathemati- 
cal studies produced a tension in her mind, she 
asked for nothing better, but buried herself in 
her work, and was perfectly contented. When she 
started being an authoress, a change came over her 
character. The development of the imagination 
created a need for love, and because this devouring 
need could not be satisfied, she became exacting, 
discontented, and mistrustful of the amount of 
affection which was accorded her. In her younger 
days she had asked for nothing more than that 
curious kind of mystic love, known only to Russians, 
which had run its course in mutual enthusiasm of 
a purely intellectual and spiritual character. It 
was otherwise- now. She lamented her lost youth, 
and the time wasted in study; she regretted the 
unfortunate talent which had deprived her woman- 
hood of its attractiveness. She wanted to be a 
woman, and to enjoy life as a woman. 



20 Six Modern W 'omen 

She had also another wish, just as passionate in 
its way and as difficult of fulfilment as the former 
one, and this was her wish to receive an appoint- 
ment in Paris. It was to a certain extent fulfilled 
when she was awarded the Prix Bordin on Christ- 
mas Eve, 1888, on the occasion of a solemn ses- 
sion of the French Academy of Science, in an 
assembly which was largely composed of learned 
men. It was the highest scientific distinction 
which had ever been accorded to a woman, and 
from henceforth she was an European celebrity, 
with a place in history. But it gave her no pleas- 
ure. She was as completely knocked up as she 
had been after receiving her doctor's degree. She 
had worked day and night for days beforehand, 
and during the weeks that followed she took part 
in the social functions which were given in her 
honor. She left no pleasure untasted, and yet she 
was not satisfied, for by this time her yearning for 
love had reached its highest pitch. 

A short time before, Sonia had made the ac- 
quaintance of a cousin of her late husband's, "fat 
M.," as she called him. The companionship of 
a sympathetic fellow-countryman put her in the 
height of good humor, and she soon found it so 
indispensable that she wanted to have him always 
at her side, and was never happy except when he 
was there. M. K. did not return this strong affec- 
tion; he was, however, quite willing to marry her, 
and the result was that a most unfortunate rela- 
tionship sprang up between them. Sonia could 



The Learned Woman 21 

not exist without him, so they travelled from 
Stockholm to Russia, and from Russia to Paris or 
Italy, in order to spend a few weeks together, and 
then separated, because by that time they were 
mutually tired of each other. It was on one of 
these journeys, when Sonia had come out of the 
sunshine of Italy into the winter of Sweden, that 
she caught cold, and no sooner had she arrived at 
Stockholm than she did everything to make her 
condition worse. In a desperate mood of indiffer- 
ence she immediately commenced her lectures, and 
went to all the social entertainments that were 
given. Dark presentiments and dreams, in which 
she always believed, had foretold that this year 
would be fatal to her. Longing for death, yet 
fearing it, she died suddenly in the beginning of 
the year 1891. 



IV 

Those who know something about Russian women, 
without having any very detailed knowledge, divide 
them into two types, and a superficial observer 
would class Sonia Kovalevsky as belonging to one 
or the other of these. The first type consists of 
luxurious, languishing, idle, fascinating women, 
with passionate black eyes, or playful gray ones, a 
soft skin, and a delicate mouth, which is admirably 
adapted for laughing and eating. These women 
have a most seductive charm; their movements 



22 Six Modern Women 

suggest that they are wont to recline on soft pil- 
lows, dressed en neglige, and their power of chat- 
tering is unlimited, and varies in tone from the 
most enchanting flattery to the worst temper ima- 
ginable. They are, in fact, the most womanly of 
women, as little to be depended upon in their 
amiability as in their anger; they are quick to 
fall in love, and men are as quickly enthralled by 
them. But Sonia Kovalevsky was not one of 
these. 

The women of the second type present the 
greatest contrast that it is possible to imagine. 
They are honest and straightforward, and essen- 
tially what is called "a good fellow," plain, sen- 
sible, brave, energetic, as strong in soul as in 
body, — thinking heads, flat figures ; they have 
none of that grace of form which is peculiar to a 
large number of Russian women. Their faces are 
generally sallow, and their skin is clammy, but 
thoroughly Russian in spite of it. There is some- 
thing lacking in them, which for want of a better 
expression I shall call a want of sweetness. There 
is a curious neutrality about them ; it takes one 
some time to realize that they are women. And 
they themselves are but dimly conscious of it, and 
then only on rare occasions. They are generally 
people with a mission, — working people, people 
with ideas. 

It is these women who have furnished the 
largest contingent to the ranks of the Nihilists. 
It is they who chose to lead the lives of hunted 



The Learned Woman 23 

wild beasts, and who foiind ample compensation in 
mental excitement for all that they had renounced 
as women and as persons of refinement. But 
although this last is a genuine Russian type, it 
is by no means confined to Russia. It is a type 
peculiar to the age. The class of women who be- 
come Nihilists in Russia are the champions for 
women's rights in Sweden, and it is they who 
agitate for women's franchise in England, who 
start women's clubs in America, and become 
governesses in Germany. 

The type is universal, but it is left to circum- 
stances to decide which special form of mania it 
is to take, — a form of mania which calls itself 
"a vocation in life." In Russia the woman, in 
whom sex lay dormant, felt it her calling to be- 
come a murderess, and that merely from a general 
desire to promote the popular welfare ; in Germany 
this philanthropic spirit took the form of wishing 
to prune little human plants in the Kindergarten. 
But this is a long chapter, which I cannot pursue 
any further at present, and which, like many others 
on the characteristics of the woman of to-day, I 
shall keep for a separate book. We must include 
Sonia Kovalevsky in this latter type: she con- 
sidered herself as belonging to it, and the whole 
course of her life is in itself sufficient to prove 
that she was one of them. The nature of her 
friendships with men furnishes us with yet another 
proof. She had a large circle of acquaintances, 
amongst whom were some of the best known and 



24 Six Modern Women 

most talented men of Russia, Scandinavia, Eng- 
land, Germany, France, and Italy, — all of whom 
enjoyed her society, although not one of them 
fell in love with her, and not one among those 
thousands said to her, " I cannot exist without 
you. " 

She belonged to the class of women with brains, 
and she was numbered amongst them. She was 
their triumphant banner, the emblem of their 
greatest victory, and their appointed Professor. 
"She did not need the lower pleasures; her 
science was her chief delight." She stood on the 
platform and taught men, and believed it to be her 
vocation. Was it not for this that she had toiled 
during long years of overwork and study, whilst 
concealing her real purpose under the threadbare 
cloak of a feigned marriage? 

She was a woman of genius with a man's brain, 
who had come into the world as an example and a 
leader of all sister brains. 

She was, and she was not ! Sometimes she felt 
that she was, and then again she did not. In her 
latter years she disclaimed the whole of her for- 
mer life, and silence reigned among the aggrieved 
sisterhood whenever her name was mentioned ; if 
these latter years had never been, they would have 
sent the hat round in order to erect a monument 
in her memory. But that became impossible; 
silence was best. 

She was a woman. She was a woman in spite 
of all — in spite of a feigned marriage which lasted 



The Learned Woman 25 

nearly ten years, in spite of a widowhood which 
lasted just as long, in spite of her Doctor's degree 
and the Professorship of Mathematics and the Prix 
Bordin — she was a woman still; not merely a 
lady, but an unhappy, injured little woman, run- 
ning through the woods with a wailing cry for her 
husband. 

She was far more of a woman than those luxu- 
rious, prattling, sweatmeat-eating young ladies 
whose languid movements lead us to suppose that 
they have only just got out of bed ; she was more 
of a woman than the great majority of wives, 
whose sole occupation it is to increase the world, 
and to obliterate themselves in so doing. 

She, who never charmed any man, was more of 
a woman than the charmers who turn love into a 
vocation. She was a new kind of woman, under- 
stood by no one, because she was new; she did 
not even understand herself, and made mistakes 
for which she was less to blame than the spirit 
of the age, by whose lash she was driven. And 
when she became free at last, it was too late to 
map out a future of her own. 

Who knows whether it would have been better 
for her had she been free from the first ? A woman 
has no destiny of her own; she cannot have one, 
because she cannot exist alone. Neither can she 
become a destiny, except indirectly, and through 
the man. The more womanly she is, and the more 
richly endowed, all the more surely will her des- 
tiny be shaped by the man who takes her to be 



26 Six Modern Women 

his wife. If then, even in the case of the average 
woman, everything depends upon the man whom 
she marries, how much more true must this be in 
the case of the woman of genius, in whom not 
only her womanhood, but also her genius, needs 
calling to life by the embrace of a man. And 
if even the average woman cannot attain to the 
full consciousness of her womanhood without man, 
how much less can the woman of genius, in 
whom sex is the actual root of her being, and 
the source from whence she derives her talent 
and her ego. If her womanhood remains unawak- 
ened, then however promising the beginning may 
be, her life will be nothing more than a gradual 
decay, and the stronger her vitality, the more 
terrible will the death-struggle be. 

That was Sonia's life. No man took her in 
his arms and awoke the whole harmony of her 
being. She became a mother and also a wife, 
but she never learned what it is to love and be 
loved again. 



V 

As I write, the air is filled with a sweet pene- 
trating fragrance, which comes from a tuberose, 
placed near me on the window sill. The narrow 
stalk seems scarcely strong enough to support its 
thick, knob-like head with the withered buds and 
sickly, onion-shaped leaves. A tuberose is a poor 



The Learned Woman 27 

unshapely thing at the best of times, but this 
plant is unhealthy because it has lived too long 
as an ornament in a dark corner of the room under 
the chandeliers, among albums and photographs. 
It was dying visibly, decaying at the roots, and 
there was no help for it. Of course it was a rare 
flower, but it grew uglier from day to day. 

They put it on the window-sill, where there 
was just room for one plant more, and a pot of 
mignonette was fetched out of the kitchen gar- 
den, attired in an artistic ruffle of green silk 
paper, and placed under the chandelier in its 
stead. It fulfilled its duty well, and seemed to 
thrive admirably among the albums, visiting-cards, 
and photographs. Nobody looked after the tube- 
rose on the window-sill until it suddenly reminded- 
them of its existence by a strong smell, and even 
then they only cast a hasty glance and noticed 
how sickly it looked. When I examined it more 
closely, I discovered three blossoms in full flower, 
and quite healthy; the stem was bent forward, and 
the blossoms were pressing against the window- 
pane, doing their best to catch the rays of the 
sun as long as the short autumn day lasted. It 
thrust forth its dying blossoms and renewed itself 
now that the great warmer of life was shining 
on, and embracing it. 

To me this flower is an emblem of Sonia 
Kovalevsky. 

She was a rare, strange being in this world 
of mignonette pots and trivialities. Everything 



28 Six Modern Women 

about her was out of proportion, from her thin 
little body, with its large head, to the sweet fra- 
grance of her genius. She, too, stood in the 
place of honor under the chandelier, among 
fashionable poets and thinkers who wrote and 
thought in accordance with the spirit of the age; 
and she, too, sickened, as though she desired 
sojnething better, and the nervous blossoms which 
her mind thrust forth grew more and more 
withered, and the thin stem which carried her 
stretched more and more towards the greater 
warmer of life, which shines upon and embraces 
the just and the unjust, — only not her, only not 
her! 

What was the reason ? Why did she get none 
of that love which is rained down upon the most 
insignificant women in so lavish a manner by 
impetuous mankind ? 

"She was not in the least pretty, that is it," 
reply her. several women admirers. 

But we women know well that it is not the 
prettiest women who are the most loved, and 
that, on the contrary, the most ardent love always 
falls to the share of those in whom men have 
something to excuse. Barbey d'Aurevilly, the 
greatest women's poet, has told us so in his im- 
mortal lines. 

"She was too old, — that is to say, she aged too 
early," — say her women admirers, still anxious 
to find an explanation. 

But that is ridiculous. Sonia Kovalevsky died 



The Learned Woman 29 

at the age of forty, and that is the age when a 
Parisian grande mondaine is at the height of her 
popularity; and as for aging early — •! A woman 
of genius does not grow old as quickly as a teacher 
in a girl's school, and the fading tuberose which 
thrusts forth fresh blossoms has a far sweeter and 
more penetrating fragrance than her white knob- 
headed sisters. 

" She asked too much," asserts Fru Anne Char- 
lotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who 
was of the same age as Sonia, and married at the 
time when she died; and her entire book on Sonia 
is founded on the one argument, that she asked 
too much of love. 

But how is it possible? Does not experience 
teach us that it is just the women who ask most 
who receive most? Always make fresh claims, 
— that is the motto of the majority of ladies in 
society, and with this solid principle to start from 
they have none of them failed. 

"She had everything that a human being can 
desire," said that worthy writer, Jonas Lie, in 
an after-dinner speech. " She had genius, fame, 
position, liberty, and she took the lead in the 
education of humanity. But when she had all 
this it seemed to her as nothing; she stretched 
out her hand like a little girl, and said, 'Oh, do 
but give me also this orange. ' " 

It was kindly said, and also very true. Father 
Lie was the only person who understood Sonia, 
and saw that she remained a little girl all her 



30 Six Modern Women 

life, — a woman who never reached her maturity. 
But, tell me, dear Father Lie, do you consider 
love to be worth no more than an orange? 

No, these explanations will never satisfy us; 
they are far too shallow and simple. The true 
reason lies deeper; it is more a symptom of the 
time in which she lived than those who knew her 
will allow. » Even so friendly and intelligent an 
exponent as Ellen Key, her second biographer, 
does not seem to be aware of the fact that, 
although Sonia is a typical woman of her time, — ■ 
typical of the more earnest upholders of women's 
rights, and the representative of the highest intel- 
lectual accomplishments to which women have 
attained, — she is also typical of that which the 
woman of this century loses in the struggle, and 
of that in which the woman of the future will be 
the gainer. 

If Sonia failed to please, — she whose personal 
charm was so great, whose vivacity was so pre- 
possessing, as all who knew her declared that it 
was; if she failed where so many lesser women 
have succeeded, her failure was entirely due to 
her ignorance of the art of flirtation, — an art 
which is as old as sex, and to which men have 
been accustomed since the world began. Even 
the most refined, the most highly developed men, 
are not geniuses in this matter, where everything 
has always been most carefully arranged for them. 
And if they did not fall in love with Sonia, it 
was due to a kind of purity with which she 



The Learned Woman 31 

unconsciously regarded the preliminaries of love, 
— a kind of nobility which existed in her more 
modern nature, and a lack of the ancient instinct 
which had been a lost heritage to her. 

Sonia belonged to a class of women who have 
only been produced in the latter half of our cen- 
tury, but in such large numbers that it is they 
who have determined the modern type. We 
cannot help hoping that they are but transitory, 
so greatly do their assumptions seem opposed to 
their sex, and yet they are formed of the best 
material that the age supplies. They are the 
women who object to begin life by fulfilling their 
destinies as women, and who consider that they 
have duties of greater importance than that of 
becoming wives and mothers; they are the 
"clever" daughters of the middle-class families, 
who, as governesses and teachers, swarm in every 
country in Europe. The popular opinion about 
them is that they do not want to marry; and as 
that, by the majority of men, is interpreted to 
mean that they are no good as wives, they turn 
to the herd of geese who are driven yearly to the 
market, and who go cackling to meet their fate. 
And although the descendants of such fathers 
and such mothers present a very small amount of 
intelligence capable of development, yet it is 
they who form the majority, and the majority is 
always right. Formerly, it was people's sole 
object to get their daughters married, clever and 
stupid alike; it was an understood thing. But 



32 Six Modern Women 

nowadays, the ones with "good heads" are set 
apart to lead celibate lives, while those who are 
"hard of understanding" are brought into the 
marriage market. This method of distribution 
has already become one of the first principles of 
middle-class economy. The daughters who are 
considered capable of providing for themselves 
are given a good education, accompanied by 
numerous hints as to the large sums which their 
parents have spent on them; while, together 
with the inevitable marriage portion, every effort 
is' made to find husbands for the others with as 
little delay as possible. The first named are 
"the clever women," but the latter make "the 
best wives;" and man's sense of justice in the 
distribution of the good things of this life has 
fixed a stern practical barrier between these two 
classes. 

The intellectual women themselves were origi- 
nally to blame for raising a distinction which is 
so essentially characteristic of our time. They 
were the first to separate themselves, and to force 
the narrow-minded bourgeois to entertain other 
than the ordinary ideas concerning women. They 
thrust aside the dishes which were spread for 
them on life's table, and grasped at others which 
had hitherto been considered the sole property of 
men, such as smoking and drinking. And when 
it appeared that they were really able to pass 
examinations and smoke cigarettes, without suf- 
fering any apparent harm from either, the spirit 



The Learned Woman 33 

of equality, so popular at th ;:X time, was 

quick to recognize a proof of the equality between 
man and wife, and to proclaim the equal rights of 
both, as well as the equality of the brain. They 
did not mention the other human ingredient, 
which could never be either equal or identical, 
because it is always inconvenient to go to the 
root of a thing, and the arguments of this mate- 
rialistic century are too superficial ever to go 
below the surface. 

Can it be true that the talented woman has 
actually forgotten that destiny intended her to be 
a woman, and bound her by eternal laws ? Can 
it be true that the best women have an unnatural 
desire to be half men, and that they would prefer 
to shirk the duties of motherhood? A woman's 
stupidity would not suffice to account for such 
an interpretation; it needs all a man's thick- 
headedness; and yet there is no doubt that that 
is, to a great extent, the popular view of the case. 
The women whose intellectual abilities are above 
the average are often those who lay themselves 
open to the reproach that they have abandoned 
their sex ; and yet, strange to say, some of them 
have attained to mature womanhood at an exceed- 
ingly early age. Sonia, who was par preference 
the woman of genius of this century, was only 
nine years old when she flew into a passion of 
jealousy, caused by a little girl who was sitting 
on the knees of her handsome young uncle. She 
bit him in the arm till it bled, merely because she 

3 



34 Six Modern Women 

believed that he liked the child better than her- 
self; that this was something more than mere 
childish naughtiness, is shown by the fact that 
her feelings towards her uncle were so changed 
that from that moment she felt disillusioned, and 
treated him with coldness. 

Disillusioned ! Even in their childhood these 
women have a strong, though indistinct, con- 
sciousness of their own worth as compared to 
ordinary women. They are always on the watch, 
and they have a good memory. Unlike ordinary 
young girls, they do not fall in love with mere 
outward qualities, nor with the first man who 
happens to cross their path. They wish to marry 
some one superior to themselves, and they do not 
mistake a passing passion for love. Then when 
the first years of adolescence with their hot 
impulses are past, and a temporary calm sets in, 
they experience a new desire, which is that they 
may enter into the full possession of their own 
being before beginning to raise a new generation. 
Physical maturity, which has hitherto been con- 
sidered sufficient, has placed the need for intel- 
lectual and psychical maturity in the shade. They 
want to be grown-up in mind and soul before 
entering on life; they do not wish to remain 
children always; they want to develop all their 
capabilities, — and this longing for individuality, 
for which the road has not yet been made clear, 
nearly always leads them astray into the wilder- 
ness of study. 



The Learned Woman 35 

This is certainly the case when they are urged 
on, as Sonia Kovalevsky was, by a remarkable 
talent. She was not even obliged to follow the 
usual weary path of study; richly endowed and 
favorably situated as she was, she discovered a 
more direct way than is possible to the majority 
of girl students. Few have been able to begin 
as she did at the age of seventeen, under the pro- 
tection of a devoted husband, and under the 
guidance of learned men, who took a personal 
interest in her welfare. Few have finished at 
the age of twenty-four, and have been loaded 
with distinctions while in the full bloom of their 
youth, able to stand on the threshold of a rich, 
full life, while fortune bid them take and choose 
whatever they might wish. 

Yet these were but hollow joys that were 
offered to her. Those six years of protracted 
study left her weak in body and soul, and so weary 
that she needed a long period of idle vegetation, 
and she felt an aversion from the very studies in 
which she had accomplished so much. Sonia had 
overworked herself in the way that most girls over- 
work themselves in their examinations, whether 
it be for the university or as teachers ; they work 
on with persistent diligence, looking neither to 
the right nor to the left, but going straight ahead 
as though they were the victims of hypnotic sug- 
gestion, with all their energies paralyzed except 
one solitary organ, — the memory. A man never 
does this; he interrupts his studies with social 



36 Six Modern Women 

recreations and by means of a system of hygiene, 
applied alike to body and soul, from which a 
woman is excluded, no less on account of her 
womanly susceptibility than owing to conven- 
tional views. During this period of nervous ten- 
sion, her sex is silent ; or if it shows itself at all, 
it does so only in general irritability. 

This was the case with Sonia; but until she 
became thoroughly engrossed in her work at 
Weierstrass's, Valdemar Kovalevsky had a great 
deal to endure. It was not enough for her that 
she made him run all kinds of messages, which 
a servant could have done as well, but she was 
always going to see him in his bachelor apart- 
ments, and planning little excursions, and she 
was never satisfied unless she could have him to 
herself. Valdemar did not understand her. He 
had willingly consented to become the husband, 
in name only, of an undeveloped little girl, and 
he respected the distorted ideas of the time, 
which had got firmly fixed into this same little 
girl's head. It is very natural that Sonia should 
not have understood the situation; it was not her 
business to do so, it was his. But she was always 
irritable and vexed after a tete-a-tete of any length 
with him, and long after his death she used scorn- 
fully to say: "He could get on capitally without 
me. If he had his cigarettes, his cup of tea, and 
a book, it was all that he required. " 

Valdemar Kovalevsky, the translator of Brehm's 
Birds and other popular scientific works into 



The Learned Woman 37 

Russian, appears to have belonged to that por- 
tion of the male sex who are called "para- 
gons." He drudged diligently, had few wants, 
always did what was right, and never gave in. 
But he was in no way suited to Sonia, and 
the fact of his having agreed to her proposal 
proves it. After he had gone to Jena to escape 
from her wilful squandering of his time, an 
estrangement took place between them, and at 
Berlin she seems to have behaved as though she 
were ashamed of him. She was living then, as 
we have seen, with a girl friend who was a fellow- 
student of hers ; and although she let Valdemar 
fetch her from Weierstrass's, she introduced him 
to no one, and did not let it appear that he was 
her husband. Afterwards, when she had finished 
her studies and undergone a long period of en- 
forced idleness at the time when her nerves were 
shaken by her father's death, she clung so closely 
to him that a little warmth came into his stolid 
nature. But, naturally enough, neither her affec- 
tion nor the birth of a daughter could change his 
nature, and even during the short time when they 
were together at St. Petersburg he allowed an 
intriguing swindler to come between them. Re- 
pulsed, dissatisfied, and saddened, Sonia went to 
Paris. 

She wished to stand alone, and the only way 
in which this was possible was to turn her studies 
to account and to work for her own bread. She 
had given up the wish to be a learned woman ; she 



38 Six Modern Women 

wanted to be a wife, to be loved and made happy; 
she had done her best, but it had turned out a 
failure. It was just about this time that she 
received an invitation through Professor Mittag- 
Leffler to be teacher under him in the new high 
school at Stockholm. He was Fru Leffler's 
brother, and a pupil of Weierstrass's. Sonia 
gratefully consented, but a fine ear detects a 
peculiar undertone in the letters with which she 
responded. 

In Stockholm she did not show the womanly 
side of her character to any one, least of all to 
Professor Mittag-Leffler, with whom she was on 
terms of the most cordial friendship. She found 
herself in very uncongenial surroundings, in a 
society where life was conducted on the strictest 
utilitarian principles. It was the worst time of 
her life, and one from which her impressionable 
nature never entirely recovered. 

Before this, however, while she was in Paris, 
she had an experience which was truly charac- 
teristic of her. 

In the interval which elapsed between her 
separation from her husband and his death, she 
made the acquaintance of a young Pole, who was, 
as Fru Lefiier tells us, "a revolutionary, a mathe- 
matician, a poet, with a soul aglow with enthu- 
siasm like her own. It was the first time that 
she had met any one who really understood her, 
who shared her varying moods, and sympathized 
with all her thoughts and dreams as he did. 



The Learned Woman 39 

They were nearly always together, and the short 
hours when they were apart were spent in writ- 
ing long effusions to each other. They were wild 
about the idea that human beings were created 
in couples, and that men and women are only 
half beings until they have found their other 
half. ..." He was with her by night and day, 
for he could seldom make up his mind to go 
before two o'clock in the morning, when he would 
climb over the garden wall, quite regardless of 
what people would think. Fru Leffler, who had 
passed the twenty years of her first marriage in 
the outer courts of the temple of Hymen, and only 
learned to know love and the joys of motherhood 
at the age of forty, alludes to this incident as 
being "very curious." Because the two did noth- 
ing but talk, talk, talk, revelling in each other's 
conversation, and assuring one another that they 
"could never be united," because "he was going 
to keep himself pure " for the girl who was 
wandering about on this or another planet, and 
keeping herself for him. 

One would imagine that this was childish non- 
sense, and that a woman of Sonia's intelligence, 
with her position in the world, must surely have 
sent the silly boy about his business as soon as 
he began to talk in this strain. But no ! her soul 
melted into his "like two flames which unite in 
one common glow." And there they sat, ner- 
vous and excited, unable to tear themselves away 
from each other, flinging endless chains of words 



40 Six Modern Women 

backwards and forwards across the table, and 
pouring streams of witticism into Danai'de's bar- 
rel, talking as though life depended upon it, for 
there must not be any pauses, — anything was 
better than those dreadful pauses, when one seems 
to hear nothing but the beating of one's own 
pulse, when shy eyes meet another's, and cold 
damp hands seek for a corner in which to hide 
themselves. 

We do not know what pleasure the "pure" 
young mathematician, poet, and Pole could find 
in this, nor do we care; we leave that to those 
who take an interest in the ebullitions of model 
young men of his class. The only part of the 
situation with which we are concerned is Sonia 
herself, and she is extremely interesting. In 
the first place, such a situation as this is never 
brought about by the man, or, at any rate, not 
more than once; and a woman cannot be en- 
trapped into it against her will. The silliest 
schoolgirl knows how to get rid of a troublesome 
man when she wishes; they all do it brilliantly. 
It is quite a different matter when she wants him 
to stay, when she is trembling with excitement, 
and dreads the moment when he will rise to go. 
Who is not well acquainted with the situation, 
especially when the parties concerned are an 
intelligent girl and a dilettante man? In this 
case Sonia was the intelligent girl. Her behavior 
was that of a young lady who is painfully con- 
scious of her own inexperience. A married 



The Learned Woman 41 

woman who knows what love is can be calm in 
the presence of the warmest passion. She knows 
so well the path which leads astray that she no 
longer fears the unknown, and uncertainty has 
no attraction for her. 

I shall probably be told that it is the married 
women who enjoy these situations most. That 
is quite true. There are many married women 
for whom marriage is neither V amour gout, nor 
V amour passion, nor V amour savant, nor yet any 
other love, but a mere mechanical transaction. 
If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his 
wife's love. Not motherhood, but the lover's 
kiss, awakes the Sleeping Beauty. And in the 
Madonna's immaculate conception the Church 
has incarnated the virgin mother in a profound 
symbol, which only needs a psychological inter- 
pretation to make it applicable to thousands of 
every-day cases. 

Extraordinary though it may seem, Sonia was 
on this occasion, as on many other occasions in 
later life, a woman who experienced desire with- 
out being in the least aware of it. She was like 
a virgin mother who had borne a child without 
knowing man's love. Valdemar Kovalevsky, who 
seems to me to have been incapable of filling any 
position in life, was certainly not the husband for 
Sonia, who, as a woman of genius, cannot be 
judged by the same standard as ordinary women. 
The average man is certainly not suited to be 
the husband of an exceptional woman with an 



42 Six Modern Women 

original mind and sensitive temperament. But 
they do not know themselves; for it is in the 
nature of great talents to remain hidden from 
their owners, who have a long way to go before 
they attain to the full realization of their own 
powers. Only those geniuses whose talents have 
little or no connection with their individuality 
are sufficiently alive to their own claims not to 
fall short in life, and not to allow themselves to 
be hindered by any natural modesty. 

Modesty comes only too naturally to great 
geniuses. They are conscious of being different 
from other people, yet when they are compelled 
to come forward they only do so under protest, 
and then beg every one's pardon. The richest 
natures are the least conscious of their own 
powers; they are ashamed because they think 
that they are offering a copper, when in reality 
they are giving away kingdoms. This is doubly 
true of the woman who knows nothing of her 
own powers until the man comes to reveal them 
to her. 

It was the same with Sonia. She was always 
giving away handfuls, — her mind, her learning, 
her social gifts; she placed them all at the dis- 
posal of others ; yet when she, who felt the eter- 
nal loneliness which accompanies genius, asked 
for the entire affection of another, she was told 
that she asked too much. There can be no agree- 
ment between that which genius has the right to 
ask, and mediocrity the power to give. It was 



The Learned Woman 43 

not a very strong affection that she had for the 
young Pole, and, such as it was, it did but inten- 
sify her sense of loneliness. It was at Paris that 
she received the news of her husband's suicide; 
and she, who suffered so acutely from every suc- 
cessive death in her family, seemed doomed to 
receive one blow after another at the hand of 
fate. She had scarcely recovered from a nervous 
fever, resulting from the shock, when she was 
called to Stockholm by the supporters of women's 
rights, — to Stockholm, where her soul congealed, 
her mind was unsatisfied, and where her body 
was to die. 



VI 

I shall only give a hasty sketch of the years that 
followed. Fru LefHer has given us a detailed 
account of them in her book on Sonia, and Ellen 
Key, in her life of Fru LefHer, has made the 
crooked straight, and has filled in some of the 
gaps. I shall merely touch upon this period for 
the sake of those of my readers who are not 
acquainted with either of the above-mentioned 
works. These years were about the most life- 
less, and, psychologically speaking, the most 
empty in Sonia's life. She was called upon to 
take part in a movement which from its com- 
mencement was doomed to fail on account of its 
narrow principles. The social circle was divided 



44 Six Modern Women 

into two separate groups, one of which consisted 
of ladies and dilettante youths, very excitable 
and full of zeal for reform, but without a single 
really superior man among them; the other was 
of an essentially Swedish character, consisting 
chiefly of men ; the " better class " of women were 
excluded, and drinking bouts, night revelling, 
club life, song-singing, and easy-going friendship 
was the rule. These included a few talented 
people among their number, and expressed the 
utmost contempt for the other group. For the 
first time in her life Sonia was made to do 
ordinary every-day work, and to exert herself 
after the manner of a mere drudge, or a cart- 
horse, for payment. Her position rendered her 
dependent on the moral standard of a clique. 
With the flexibility of her Russian nature, she 
renounced the freedom to which she had been 
accustomed, and devoted herself to her duties 
as lecturer under a professor. This work soon 
began to weary her to death. Mathematics 
lost their charm now that the genius of old 
Weierstrass was no longer there to elucidate 
the problems, and to encourage her to do 
that which women had hitherto been unable 
to accomplish. 

For some time she struggled on through thick 
and thin, without however sinking low enough to 
give her superiors no longer any cause to shake 
their heads or to admonish her. Lively, witty, 
and unassuming, the task of entertaining people 



The Learned Woman 45 

at their social gatherings fell to her share, and 
she bore the weight of it without a murmur, 
until her wasted amiability resulted in an undue 
familiarity in the circle of her admirers, of both 
sexes, causing her much vexation. When the 
first excitement of novelty was passed, she de- 
voted herself chiefly to her true but stolid friend, 
Anne Charlotte Leffler. It was one of those 
friendships which are getting to be very common 
now that women are becoming intellectual; it 
was not the result of any deep mutual sympathy, 
nor was it formed out of the fulness of their lives, 
but rather from the consciousness that there was 
something lacking, as when two minus combine 
in the attempt to form one plus. Then as soon 
as the plus is there, all interest in one another, 
and all mutual sympathy is a thing of the past, 
as it proved in this case, when the Duke of 
Cajanello appeared on Fru Leffler' s horizon, and 
she afterwards, in the honeymoon of her happi- 
ness, possibly with the best of intentions, but 
with very little tact or sympathy, wrote her 
obituary book on Sonia. 

One of the results of this friendship was a 
series of unsuccessful literary attempts, for which 
the material was provided by Sonia, and drama- 
tized by Fru Leffler. The latter tried to put 
Sonia's psychological, intuitive experiences into 
a realistic shape, and the result was, as might be 
expected, a failure. Sonia was a mystic, whose 
whole being was one indistinct longing, without 



46 Six Modern Women 

beginning and without end; Fru Leffler was an 
enlightened woman, daughter of a college rector, 
"who worked incessantly at her own develop- 
ment." Even while the work of collaboration 
was in progress, a slight friction began to make 
itself felt between the two friends. Fru Leffler 
was vexed at having, as she expressed it, " repud- 
iated her own child" in the story called "Round 
about Marriage," in which she attempted to 
describe the lives of women who remain unmar- 
ried. The storms raised by Sonia's vivid imagi- 
nation oppressed her, and imported a foreign 
element into her sober style, resulting in long 
padded novels, which were too ambitious, and 
had a false ring about them. Her influence on 
Sonia produced the opposite result. Sonia saw 
that Fru Leffler was less talented than she had 
supposed, and this made her place greater con- 
fidence in, her own merits as an author. She 
began to write a story of her own youth, called 
"The Sisters Rajevsky," which we have already 
mentioned, followed by a story about the so- 
called Nihilists, " Vera Barantzova ; " both these 
books displayed a wider experience, and con- 
tained the promise of greater things than any of 
the contemporaneous literature by women, but 
they did not receive the recognition which they 
deserved, because nobody understood the char- 
acters which she depicted. 

Up till now there has been a fundamental 
error in all the attempts made to understand 



The Learned Woman 47 

Sonia Kovalevsky, and the fault is chiefly due to 
Fru Leffler, who wrote of her from the following 
standpoint : — 

" I am great and you are great, 
We are both equally great." 

Sonia and her biographer are by no means 
"equally great." To compare Fru Leffler to 
Sonia is like comparing a nine days' wonder 
to an eternal phenomenon. One is an ordi- 
nary woman with a carefully cultivated talent, 
while the other is one of those mysteries who, 
from time to time, make their appearance in 
the world, in whom nature seems to have over- 
stepped her boundaries, and who are created 
to live lonely lives, to suffer and to die without 
having ever attained the full possession of their 
own being. 

In the year 1888, at the age of thirty-eight, 
Sonia learned for the first time to know the love 
which is a woman's destiny. M. K. was a great, 
heavy Russian boyar, who had been a professor, 
but was dismissed on account of his free-think- 
ing views. He was a dissipated man and rich, 
and had spent his time in travelling since he left 
Russia. He was no longer young, like the Duke 
of Cajanello. A few years older than Sonia, he 
was one of those complacent, self-centred char- 
acters who have never known what it is to long 
for sympathy, who are totally devoid of ideals, 
and are not given to vain illusions. Compara- 



48 Six Modern Women 

tively speaking, an older woman always has a 
better chance with a man younger than herself, 
and there was nothing very surprising in the love 
which the young and insignificant Duke bestowed 
on Fru Leffler. With Sonia it was quite differ- 
ent. The boyar had already enjoyed as many of 
the good things of this world as he desired; he 
was both practical and sceptical, the kind of man 
whom women think attractive, and who boast that 
they understand women. I am not at liberty to 
mention his name, as he is still alive and enjoys 
good health. He was interested in Sonia, as 
much as he was capable of being interested in 
any one, because she was a compatriot to be 
proud of, and he also liked her because she was 
good company, but Sonia never acquired all the 
power over him which she should have had. He 
was not like a susceptible young man who is 
influenced by the first woman who has really 
given him the full passion of her love. The 
long-repressed love which was now lavished upon 
him by the woman who was no longer young had 
none of the surprise of novelty in it, not even 
the unexpected treasure of flattered vanity. He 
accepted it calmly, and never for a moment did 
he allow it to interfere with his mode of life. 
Even though he had no wife, his bachelor's exist- 
ence had never lacked the companionship of 
women. Sonia should occupy the position of 
wife, but an ardent lover it was no longer in his 
power to be. 



The Learned Woman 49 

The conflict points plainly to a double rupture 
between them, — the one internal and the other 
external, — both brought about by the spirit of 
the age. 

Sonia's womanhood bad awakened in her the 
first time they met, and he became her first love. 
She loved him as a young girl loves, with a 
trembling and ungovernable joy at finding all 
that had hitherto been hidden in herself; she 
rejoiced in the knowledge that he was there, that 
she would see him again to-morrow as she had 
seen him to-day, that she could touch him, hold 
him with her hands. She lived only when she 
saw him; her senses were dulled when he was 
no longer there. It was then that Stockholm 
became thoroughly hateful to her; it seemed to 
hold her fast in its clutches, to crush the woman 
in her, and to deprive her of her nationality. 
He represented the South, — the great world of 
intellect and freedom ; but above all else, he was 
home, he was Russia! He was the emblem of 
her native land; he had come speaking the lan- 
guage in which her nurse had sung to her, in 
which her father and sister and all the loved and 
lost had spoken to her; he was her hearth and 
home in the dreary world. But more than all 
this, he was the only man capable of arousing 
her love. 

But if she took a short holiday and followed 
him to Paris and Italy, his cold greeting was 
sure to chill her inmost being, and instead of 

4 



So Six Modern Women 

the comfort which she had hoped to find in his 
love and sympathy, she was thrown back upon 
herself, more miserable and disappointed than 
before. 

Her spirits were beginning to give way. It 
seemed as though the world were growing empty 
around her and the darkness deepening, while 
she stood in the midst of it all, alone and unpro- 
tected. But what drove matters to a climax was 
that their most intimate daily intercourse took 
place just at the time when she was in Paris 
working hard, and sitting up at nights. When 
she was awarded the Prix Bordin on Christmas 
Eve, 1888, in the presence of the greatest French 
mathematicians, she forgot that she was a Euro- 
pean celebrity, whose name would endure forever 
and be numbered among the women who had out- 
stripped all others; she was only conscious of 
being an overworked woman, suffering from one 
of those nervous illnesses when white seems 
turned to black, joy to sorrow, — enduring the 
unutterable misery caused by mental and physi- 
cal exhaustion, when the night brings no rest to 
the tortured nerves. As is always the case with 
productive natures under like circumstances, her 
passions were at their highest pitch, and she 
needed sympathy from without to give relief. It 
was then that she received an offer of marriage 
from the man whom she loved ; but she was too 
well aware of the gulf which lay between his 
gentlemanly bearing and her devouring passion 



The Learned Woman 51 

to accept it, and determined that since she could 
not have all she would have nothing. It may be 
that she was haunted by the recollection of her 
first marriage, or she may have been influenced 
by the woman's rights standpoint which weighs 
as in a scale : For so and so many ounces of love, 
I must have so and so many ounces of love and 
fidelity; and for so and so many yards of virtuous 
behavior, I have a right to expect exactly the 
same amount from him. 

It happened, however, that the man in ques- 
tion would not admit of such calculations, and 
Sonia went back to Stockholm and her hated 
university work with the painful knowledge of 
"never having been all in all to anybody." After 
a time she began to realize that love is not a thing 
which can be weighed and measured. She now 
concentrated her strength in an attempt to free 
herself from her work at Stockholm, which had 
been turned into a life-long appointment since 
she won the Prix Bordin; she longed to get away 
from Sweden, where she felt very lonely, having 
no one to whom she could confide her thoughts. 
She had some hopes of being given an honorary 
appointment as a member of the Imperial Russian 
Academy, which would place her in a position of 
pecuniary independence, with the liberty to reside 
where she pleased. But when she returned to 
her work at Stockholm in the beginning of the 
year 1891, after a trip to Italy in company with 
the man whom she loved, it was with the convic- 



52 Six Modern Women 

tion, grown stronger than ever, of not being able 
to put up with the loneliness and emptiness of 
her existence any longer, and with the determi- 
nation of throwing everything aside and accepting 
his proposal. 

She came to this decision while suffering from 
extreme weariness. Her Russian temperament 
was very much opposed to the manner of her 
life for the last few years. Her spirits, which 
wavered between a state of exaltation and apathy, 
were depressed by a regular routine of work and 
social intercourse, and she was never allowed the 
thorough rest which she so greatly needed. In 
one year she lost all who were dear to her ; and 
though dissatisfied with her own life, she was 
able to sympathize deeply with her beloved sister 
Anjuta, whose proud dreams of youth were either 
doomed to destruction, or else their fulfilment 
was accompanied with disappointment, while she 
herself was dying slowly, body and soul. Life 
had dealt hardly with both these sisters. When 
Sonia travelled home for the last time, after ex- 
changing the warm, cheerful South for the cold, 
dismal North, she broke down altogether. Alone 
and over-tired as she always was on these innu- 
merable journeys, which were only undertaken in 
order to cure her nervous restlessness, her spirits 
were no longer able to encounter the discomforts 
of travel, and she gave way. The perpetual 
changes, whether in rain, wind, or snow, accom- 
panied by all the small annoyances, such as get- 



The Learned Woman 53 

ting money changed, and finding no porters, 
overpowered her, and for a short time life seemed 
to have lost all its value. With an utter disre- 
gard for consequences, she exposed herself to all 
winds and weathers, and arrived ill at Stockholm, 
where her course of lectures was to begin imme- 
diately. A heavy cold ensued, accompanied by 
an attack of fever; and so great was her longing 
for fresh air, that she ran out into the street on 
a raw February day in a light dress and thin 
shoes. 

Her illness was short ; she died a couple of 
days after it began. Two friends watched beside 
her, and she thanked them warmly for the care 
they took of her, — thanked them as only strangers 
are thanked. They had gone home to rest before 
the death-struggle began, and there was no one 
with her but a strange nurse, who had just 
arrived. She died alone, as she had lived, — 
died, and was buried in the land where she had 
not wished to live, and where her best strength 
had been spent. 



VII 

There is yet another picture behind the one 
depicted in these pages. It is large, dark, and 
mysterious, like a reflection in the water; we 
see it, but it melts away each time we try to 
grasp it. 



54 Six Modern Women 

When we know the story of a person's life, 
and are acquainted with their surroundings and 
the conditions under which they have been 
brought up ; when we have been told about their 
sufferings, and the illness of which they died, we 
imagine that we know all about them, and are 
able to form a more or or less correct portrait of 
them in our mind's eye, and we even think that 
we are in a position to judge of their life and 
character. There is scarcely any one whose life 
is less veiled to the public gaze than Sonia 
Kovalevsky's. She was very frank and communi- 
cative, and took quite a psychological interest in 
her own character; she had nothing to conceal* 
and was known by a large number of people 
throughout Europe. She lived her life before 
the eyes of the public, and died of inflamma- 
tion of the lungs, brought on by an attack of 
influenza. 

Such was Sonia Kovalevsky's life as depicted 
by Fru Leffler, in a manner which reveals a very 
limited comprehension of her subject; the chief 
thing missing is the likeness to Sonia. 

This sketch was afterwards corrected and com- 
pleted with great sympathy and delicacy by Ellen 
Key, but she has also failed to catch the likeness 
of Sonia Kovalevsky. 

And mine — written as it is with the full con- 
sciousness of being better able to understand 
her than either of these two, partly on account of 
the impressions left by my own half-Russian 



The Learned Woman 55 

childhood; partly, too, because in some ways 
my temperament resembles hers — my sketch, 
although it is an analysis of her life, is not 
Sonia Kovalevsky. 

She is still standing there, supernaturally 
great, like a shadow when the moon rises, which 
seems to grow larger the longer one looks at it; 
and as I write this, I feel as though she were as 
near to me as a body that one knocks up against 
in the dark. She comes and goes. Sometimes 
she appears close beside me sitting on the flower- 
table, a little bird-like figure, and I seem to 
see her quite distinctly; then, as soon as I begin 
to realize her presence, she has gone. And I 
ask myself, — Who is she ? I do not know ; she 
did not know it herself. She lived, it is true, 
but she never lived her own, real, individual 
life. 

She remains there still, — a form which came 
out of the darkness and went back into the same. 
She was a thorough child of the age in every 
little characteristic of her aimless life; she was 
a woman of this century, or/rather, she was what 
this century forces a woman to be, — a genius for 
nothing, a woman for nothing, ever struggling 
along a road which leads to nowhere, and faint- 
ing on the way as she strives to attain a distant 
mirage. Tired to death, and yet afraid to die, 
she died because the instinct for self-preservation 
forsook her for the space of a single instant; died 
only to be buried under a pile of obituary notices, 



56 Six Modern Women 

and forgotten for the next novelty. But behind 
them all she stands, an immortal personality, hot 
and volcanic as the world's centre, a thorough 
woman, yet more than a woman. Her brain rose 
superior to sex, and learned to think independ- 
ently, only to be dragged down again and made 
subservient to sex; her soul was full of mys- 
ticism, conscious of the Infinite existing in her 
little body, and out of her little body again soar- 
ing up towards the Infinite, — a one day's super- 
ficial consciousness which allowed itself to be 
led astray by public opinion, yet possessing, all 
the while, a sub-consciousness, which, poetically 
viewed, clung fast to the eternal realities in her 
womanly frame, and would not let them rise to 
the brain, which, freed from the body, floated in 
empty space. Hers was a queenly mind, feeding 
a hundred beggars at her board, — giving to all, 
but confiding in none. 

Ellen Key once said to me: "When she shook 
hands, you felt as if a little bird with a beating 
heart had fluttered into your hand and out again." 
And another friend, Hilma Strandberg, a young 
writer of great promise, whose after career belied 
its commencement, said, after her first meeting 
with Sonia, that she had felt as though the latter' s 
glance had pierced her through and through, after 
which she seemed to be dissecting her soul, bit 
by bit, every bit vanishing into thin air; this 
psychical experience was followed by such violent 
bodily discomfort that she almost fainted, and it 



The Learned Woman 57 

was only with the greatest difficulty that she 
managed to get home. 

Both these descriptions prove that Sonia's 
hands and eyes were the most striking part of her 
personality. Many anecdotes are told about her 
penetrating glance, but this is the only one which 
mentions her hands, although it is true that Fru 
Leffler remarked that they were very much dis- 
figured by veins. But this one is sufficient to 
complete a picture of her which I remember to 
have seen: she has a slender little child's body, 
and her hands are the hands of a child, with 
nervous, crooked little fingers, anxiously bent 
inwards ; and in one hand she clasps a book, with 
such visible effort that it makes one's heart ache 
to look at her. 

The hands often afford better material for 
psychological study than the face, and they give 
a deeper and more truthful insight into the char- 
acter because they are less under control. There 
are people with fine, clever faces, whose hands are 
like sausages, — fleshy and veinless, with thick 
stumpy fingers which warn us to beware of the 
animated mask. And there are round, warm, 
sensuous faces, with full, almost thick lips, which 
are obviously contradicted by pale, blue-veined, 
sickly-looking hands. The momentary amount 
of intellectual power which a person has at his 
disposal can change the face, but the hands are 
of a more physical nature, and their speech is a 
more physical one. Sonia's face was lit up by 



58 Six Modern Women 

the soul in her eyes, which bore witness to the 
intense interest which she took in everything 
that was going on around her; but the weak, 
nervous, trembling little hands told of the unsat- 
isfied, helpless child, who was never to attain the 
full development of her womanhood. 



II 

Neurotic Keynotes 



Last year there was a book published in Lon- 
don with the extraordinary title of "Keynotes." 
Three thousand copies were sold in the course of 
a few months, and the unknown author became 
a celebrity. Soon afterwards the portrait of a 
lady appeared in "The Sketch." She had a 
small, delicate face, with a pained and rather 
tired expression, and a curious, questioning look 
in the eyes ; it was an attractive face, very gentle 
and womanly, and yet there was something dis- 
illusioned and unsatisfied about it. This lady 
wrote under the pseudonym of George Egerton, 
and " Keynotes " was her first book. 

It was a strange, book ! too good a book to 
become famous all at once. It burst upon the 
world like the opening buds in spring, like the 
cherry blossom after the first cold shower of rain. 
What can have made this book so popular in the 
England of to-day, which is as totally devoid of 
all true literature as Germany itself? Was it 
only the writer's strong individuality, which each 
successive page impressed upon the reader's 
nerves more vividly and more painfully than the 



62 Six Modern Women 

last? The reader, did I say? Yes, but not the 
male reader. There are very few men who have 
a sufficiently keen appreciation for a woman's 
feelings to be able to put their own minds and 
souls into the swing of her confession, and to 
accord it their full sympathy. Yet there are 
such men. We may perhaps come across two or 
three of them in a lifetime, but they disappear 
from our sight, as we do from theirs. And they 
are not readers. Their sympathy is of a deeper, 
more personal character, and as far as the success 
of a book is concerned, it need not be taken into 
consideration at all. 

"Keynotes" is not addressed to men, and it 
will not please them. It is not written in the 
style adopted by the other women Georges, — 
George Sand and George Eliot, — who wrote from 
a man's point of view, with the solemnity of a 
clergyman or the libertinism of a drawing-room 
hero. There is nothing of the man in this book, 
and no attempt is made to imitate him, even in 
the style, which springs backwards and forwards 
as restlessly as a nervous little woman at her 
toilet, when her hair will not curl and her stay- 
lace breaks. Neither is it a book which favors 
men; it is a book written against them, a book 
for our private use. 

There have been such books before; old-maid 
literature is a lucrative branch of industry, both 
in England and Germany (the two most unliterary 
countries in Europe), and that is probably the 



Neurotic Keynotes 63 

reason why the majority of authoresses write as 
though they were old maids. But there are no 
signs of girlish prudery in "Keynotes;" it is a 
liberal book, indiscreet in respect of the inti- 
macies of married life, and entirely without 
respect for the husband ; it is a book with claws 
and teeth ready to scratch and bite when the 
occasion offers, — not the book of a woman who 
married for the sake of a livelihood, but the book 
of a devoted wife, who would be inseparable from 
her husband if only he were not so tiresome, and 
dull, and stupid, such a thorough man, insuffer- 
able at times, and yet indispensable as the hus- 
band always is to the wife. 

And it is the book of a gentlewoman ! 

We have had tell-tale women before, but Heaven 
preserve us! Fru Skram is a man in petticoats; 
she speaks her mind plainly enough, — rather too 
plainly to suit my taste. " Gyp," a distinguished 
Frenchwoman, has written " Autour du Manage," 
and she cannot be said to mince matters either. 
But here we have something quite different; 
something which does not in the least resemble 
Gyp's frivolous worldliness or Amalie Skram's 
coarseness. Mrs. Egerton would shudder at the 
thought of washing dirty linen in public, and she 
could not, even if she were to force herself, treat 
the relationship between husband and wife with 
cynical irony, and she does not force herself in 
the very least. 

She writes as she really is, because she cannot 



64 Six Modern Women 

do otherwise. She has had an excellent educa- 
tion, and is a lady with refined tastes, with some- 
thing of that innocence of the grown woman 
which is almost more touching than a girl's 
innocence, because it proves how little of his 
knowledge of life in general, and his sex in par- 
ticular, the Teutonic husband confides to his 
wife. She stands watching him, — an eating, 
loving, smoking organism. Heavens! how weari- 
some ! So loved, and yet so wearisome S It is 
unbearable ! And she retreats into herself, and 
realizes that she is a woman. 

It is almost universal amongst women, espe- 
cially Germans, that they do not take man as 
seriously as he likes to imagine. They think 
him comical, — not only when they are married 
to him, but even before that, when they are in 
love with him. Men have no idea what a comical 
appearance they present, not only as individuals, 
but as a race. The comic part about a man is 
that he is so different from women, and that is 
just what he is proudest of. The more refined 
and fragile a woman is, the more ridiculous she 
is likely to find the clumsy great creature who 
takes such a roundabout way to gain his comical 
ends. 

To young girls especially man offers a per- 
petual excuse for a laugh, and a secret shudder. 
When men find a group of women laughing among 
themselves, they never suspect that it is they who 
are the cause of it. And that again is so comic ! 



Neurotic Keynotes 65 

The better a man is, the more he is in earnest 
when he makes his pathetic appeal for a great 
love; and woman, who takes a special delight in 
playing a little false, even when there is no 
necessity, becomes as earnest and solemn as he, 
when all the time she is only making fun of 
him. A woman wants amusement, wants change; 
a monotonous existence drives her to despair, 
whereas a man thrives on monotony, and the 
cleverer he is the more he wishes to retire into 
himself, that he may draw upon his own resources ; 
a clever woman needs variety, that she may 
take her impressions from without. 

. . . The early blossoms of the cherry-tree 
shudder beneath the cold rain which has burst 
their scales; this shudder is the deepest vibra- 
tion in Mrs. Egerton's book. What is the sub- 
ject? A little woman in every imaginable mood, 
who is placed in all kinds of likely and unlikely 
circumstances: in every story it is the same little 
woman with a difference, the same little woman, 
who is always loved by a big, clumsy, comic 
man, who is now good and well-behaved, now 
wild, drunk, and brutal; who sometimes ill-treats 
her, sometimes fondles her, but never under- 
stands what it is that he ill-treats and fondles. 
And she sits like a true Englishwoman with her 
fishing-rod, and while she is waiting for a bite, 
"her thoughts go to other women she has known, 
women good and bad, school friends, casual ac- 
quaintances, women-workers, — joyless machines 

5 



66 Six Modern Women 

for grinding daily corn, unwilling maids grown 
old in the endeavor to get settled, patient wives 
who bear little ones to indifferent husbands until 
they wear out, — a long array. She busies herself 
with questioning. Have they, too, this thirst for 
excitement, for change, this restless craving for 
sun and love and motion? Stray words, half 
confidences, glimpses through soul-chinks of sup- 
pressed fires, actual outbreaks, domestic catas- 
trophes, — how the ghosts dance in the cells of 
her memory ! And she laughs — laughs softly to 
herself because the denseness of man, his chival- 
rous conservative devotion to the female idea he 
has created, blinds him, perhaps happily, to the 
problems of her complex nature, . . . and weri 
it is that the workings of our hearts are closed 
to them, that we are cunning enough or great 
enough to seem to be what they would have us, 
rather than be what we are. But few of them 
have had the insight to find out the key to our 
seeming contradictions, — the why a refined, 
physically fragile woman will mate with a brute, 
a mere male animal with primitive passions, 
and love him; the why strength and beauty 
appeal more often than the more subtly fine qual- 
ities of mind or heart; the why women (and not 
the innocent ones) will condone sins that men 
find hard to forgive in their fellows. They have 
all overlooked the eternal wildness, the untamed 
primitive savage temperament that lurks in the 
mildest, best woman. Deep in through ages of 



Neurotic Keynotes 67 

convention this primeval trait burns, an untam- 
able quantity that may be concealed, but is never 
eradicated by culture, —the keynote of woman's 
witchcraft and woman's strength." 

They are not stories which Mrs. Egerton tells 
us. She does not care for telling stories. They 
are keynotes which she strikes, and these key- 
notes met with an extraordinary and most unex- 
pected response. They struck a sympathetic chord 
in women, which found expression in a multitude 
of letters, and also in the sale of the book. An 
author can hope for no happier fate than to receive 
letters which re-echo the tune that he has dis- 
covered in his own soul. Those who have received 
txicm know what pleasant feelings they call forth. 
We often do not know where they come from, we 
cannot answer them, nor should we wish to do so 
if we could. They give us a sudden insight into 
the hidden centre of a living soul, where we can 
gaze into the secret, yearning life, which is never 
lived in the sight of the world, but is generally 
the best part of a person's nature; we feel the 
sympathetic clasp of a friendly hand, and our own 
soul is filled with a thankfulness which will never 
find expression in words. The dark world seems 
filled with unknown friends, who surround us on 
every side like bright stars in the night. 

Mrs. Egerton had struck the fundamental chord 
in woman's nature, and her book was received 
with applause by hundreds of women. The critic 
said : " The woman in ' Keynotes ' is an excep- 



68 Six Modern Women 

tional type, and we can only deal with her as 
such. " " Good heavens ! How stupid they, are ! " 
laughed Mrs. Egerton. Numberless women wrote 
to her, women whom she did not know, and whose 
acquaintance she never made. " We are quite 
ordinary, every-day sort of people," they said; 
"we lead trivial, unimportant lives; but there is 
something in us which vibrates to your touch, for 
we, too, are such as you describe." "Keynotes" 
took like wildfire. 

There is nothing tangible in the book to which 
it can be said to owe its significance. Notes are 
not tangible. The point on which it differs from 
all other well-known books by women is the in- 
tensity of its awakened consciousness as woman. 
It follows no pattern and is quite independent of 
any previous work; it is simply full of a woman's 
individuality. It is not written on a large scale, 
and it does not reveal a very expansive tempera- 
ment. But, such as it is, it possesses an amount 
of nervous energy which carries us along with it, 
and we must read every page carefully until the 
last one is turned, not peep at the end to see what 
is going to happen, as we do when reading a story 
with a plot ; we must read every page for its own 
sake, if we would feel the power of its different 
moods, varying from feverish haste to wearied 
rest. 



Neurotic Keynotes 69 



II 



Nearly a year afterwards, a book was published in 
Paris by Lemerre, called "Dilettantes." Instead 
of the author's name there were three stars, but a 
catalogue issued by a less illustrious publisher is 
not so discreet. It mentions the bearer of a well- 
known pseudonym as the author of the book; a 
lady who first gained a reputation by translating 
Hungarian folk songs into French, for which she 
received an acknowledgment from the Academie 
Francaise, and who afterwards introduced Scandi- 
navian authors to Paris, thereby deserving the 
thanks of both countries. She has also made 
herself a name in literary circles by her original 
and clever criticisms. Those who are behind the 
scenes know that the translator's pseudonym and 
the three stars conceal a lady who belongs to the 
highest aristocracy of Austria, and who is herself 
a " dilettante, " inasmuch as she writes without any 
pecuniary object, and that, quite independent of 
her public, she writes and translates what she 
pleases. Her social position has placed her among 
intellectual people; on her mother's side she is 
descended from one of the foremost families among 
the Austrian nobility, and she has lived in Paris 
from her childhood, where she has enjoyed the 
society of the best authors, and acquired a French 
style which, for richness, beauty, and grace, might 



70 Six Modern Women 

well cause many an older French author to envy 
her. It is in this French, which she finds more 
pliable than the homely Viennese German, that 
this curious book is written. 

I search high and low for words in which to 
describe the nature of this book, but in vain. It 
is womanly to such an extent, and in such a pecu- 
liar way, that we lack the words to express it in a 
language which has not yet learned to distinguish 
between the art of man and the art of woman in 
the sphere of production. It has the same effect 
upon us as Mrs. Egerton's "Keynotes. 3 ' 

The same reason which makes it difficult to 
understand this Celtic woman with the English 
pseudonym, makes it equally difficult to draw an in- 
telligible picture of this French-writing Austrian, 
with the Polish and Hungarian blood mingled in 
her veins. But it is not the cross between the 
races, nor, we might add, is it any cross between 
soul and ideas which makes these two women so 
incomprehensible and almost enigmatical ; one is 
twice married, the other a girl, although she is 
perhaps the more wearied and disillusioned of the 
two, — and yet it is not the outer circumstances of 
their lives which render both what they are, it is 
something in themselves, quite apart from the ex- 
perience which beautifies and develops a woman's 
character; it is the keynote of their being which 
retreats shyly to the background as though afraid 
of the public gaze. It is the beginning of a series 
of personal confessions at first hand, and forms an 



Neurotic Keynotes 71 

entirely new department in women's literature. 
Hitherto, as I have already said, all books, even 
the best ones, written by women, are imitations of 
men's books, with the addition of a single high- 
pitched, feminine note, and are therefore nothing 
better than communications received at second 
hand. But at last the time has come when woman 
is so keenly alive to her own nature that she re- 
veals it when she speaks, even though it be in 
riddles. 

I have often pointed out that men only know 
the side of our character which they wish to see, 
or which it may please us to show them. If they 
are thorough men, they seek the woman in us, 
because they need it as the complement to their 
own nature; but often they seek our "soul," our 
"mind," our "character," or whatever else they 
may happen to look upon as the beautifying veil 
of our existence. Something may come of the 
first, but of the last nothing. Mrs. Egerton inter- 
preted man from the first of the above standpoints ; 
she wrote of him half in hate and half in admira- 
tion; her men are great clowns. The author of 
"Dilettantes " wrote from the opposite point of 
view; her man is the smooth-speaking poseur, 
of whom she writes with a shrug of the shoulders 
and an expression of mild contempt. 

Both feel themselves to be so utterly different 
from what they were told they were, and which 
men believe them to be. They do not understand 
it at all ; they do not understand themselves in the 



72 Six Modern Women 

very least. They interpret nothing with the under- 
standing, but their instinct makes them feel quite 
at home with themselves and leads them to assert 
their own natures. They are no longer a reflec- 
tion which man moulds into an empty form ; they 
are not like Galatea, who became a living woman 
through Pygmalion's kiss; they were women be- 
fore they knew Pygmalion, — such thorough women 
that Pygmalion is often no Pygmalion to them at 
all, but a stupid lout instead. 

It is a fearful disappointment, and causes a 
woman — and many a womanly woman too — to 
shrink from man and scan him critically. " You ? " 
she cries. "No, it were better not to love at all!" 
But the day is coming — 

And when the day has come, then woman will 
be as bad as Strindberg's Megoras, or as humorous 
as a certain poetess who sent a portrait of her hus- 
band to a friend, with this inscription : " My old 
Adam ; " or else she may meet with the same fate 
as Countess Resa in the anonymous book of a 
certain well-known authoress. She will commit 
suicide in one way or the other. She will not 
kill herself like Countess Resa, but she will kill 
a part of her nature. And these women, who are 
partly dead, carry about a corpse in their souls 
from whence streams forth an odor as of death; 
these women, whose dead natures have the power 
of charming men with a mystery they would gladly 
solve, — these women are our mothers, sisters, 
friends, teachers, and we scarcely know the mean- 



Neurotic Keynotes 73 

ing of the shiver down our backs which we feel 
in their presence. A very keen consciousne. 
needed to dive down deep enough in ourselves to 
discover the reason, and very subtle, spiritual tools 
are necessary to grasp the process and to reproduce 
it. The Austrian authoress possessed both these 
requisites. But there is also a third which is 
equally indispensable to any one who would draw 
such a portrait of themselves, and that is the dis- 
tinguished manner of a noble and self-confident 
nature, in which everything can be said. 

She has something besides, which gives the 
book a special attraction of its own, and that is her 
extremely modern, artistic feeling, which teaches 
how the laws of painting can be brought to bear 
upon the art of writing, and gives her a keen 
appreciation of the value of sound in relation to 
language. 

There is a picture by Claude Monet, — pale, 
golden sunshine upon a misty sea. There is 
scarcely anything to be seen beyond this faint 
golden haze, resting upon the shimmering, trans- 
parent water, painted in rainbow colors, pale as 
opal. There is just a faint suggestion of a prom- 
ontory, rising 'up from the warm, southern sea, 
and something which looks like a squadron of fish- 
ing boats in the far distance. It is not quite day, 
but it is already light, — one of those cool morn- 
ings which precede a dazzling day. It is years 
since last I saw this picture, but it charmed me 
so much that I have never forgotten it. It is in 



74 Six Modern Women 

consequence of this same sense for fine shades of 
color, applied in this instance to the soul, that 
" Dilettantes " was written. 

It is a very quiet book, and just as there is not 
a single strong color in Monet's picture, so there 
is not a single high note in this book. We feel 
like gazing down into the water which glides and 
glides along, carrying with it seaweed, dead bodies, 
and men, but always in silence, — a most unevent- 
ful book. But beneath this almost lethargical 
stillness is enacted a tragedy in which a life is 
at stake, and the stake is lost, and death is the 
consequence. The deadliest blow against another's 
soul is caused, not by words, but by deafness and 
indifference, by neglect at the moment when the 
heart yearns for love, and the bud is ready to 
blossom into flower beneath a single breath of 
sympathy. Next morning, when you go to look 
at it, you find it withered ; it is then too late for 
your warm breath and willing fingers to force it 
open ; you only make it worse, and at last the buds 
fall to the ground. 

The famous unknown has called her book 
"Dilettantes," although there is but one lady in 
it to whom the name applies. Can it be that, by 
her use of the plural, she meant to include herself 
with the heroine? The supposition seems not 
unlikely. 

She introduces us to a colony of artists in Paris, 
amongst whom is Baron Mark Sebenyi, an Hun- 
garian magnate, who is a literary dilettante. At 



Neurotic Keynotes 75 

the house of the old Princess Ebendorf he makes 
the acquaintance of her niece, Theresia Thaszary, 
and feels himself drawn towards her as his "twin 
soul." During the Princess's long illness, they 
become engaged, and when the Princess dies he 
continues his visits to the Countess as though her 
aunt were still alive, and he spends his hours of 
literary work in her house, because, as he says, 
her presence is an indispensable source of inspira- 
tion to him. Countess Resa is one of those whom 
a life of constant travel has rendered cosmopoli- 
tan. Her life is passed in a state of mental tor- 
por which is more general, and, I should like to 
add, more normal, among young girls than men 
imagine or married women remember; she was 
neither contented nor discontented while she 
lived with her aunt, and she continues the same 
now, with Mark continually beside her. She is 
glad to have him with her; she feels a certain 
attraction in his manly and sympathetic presence, 
and his behavior towards herself is so decorous 
that it seldom happens that so much as a pressure 
of the hand passes between them. She knows 
that Mark has relations with other women, but 
that fact does not enter into her womanly con- 
ciousness at all. 

All goes well until a fashionable friend of hers, 
a rather vulgar lady, asks her when she means 
to marry Mark, and persuades her to go into 
society, although she has no desire to do so, and is 
perfectly content with the sameness of her life. 



76 Six Modern Women 

In society she finds that her friendship with Mark 
attracts observation, and this is the first shock 
which leads to an awakening. In the long winter 
hours, while she is sitting still in the room where 
he is writing, she suddenly realizes the situation, 
and feels that it is like a lover's tete-a-tete. His 
behavior in society irritates her in a hundred lit- 
tle ways, because she knows that he is not true 
to his real nature, and that he gives way to his 
vanity as an author and poses in public. Mark 
has no intention of marrying her; he is quite con- 
tent with matters as they stand. Cold-hearted, 
and probably aged before his time, he feels drawn 
towards her by a kind of distant, erotic feeling, 
and he seeks her society for the sake of the draw- 
ing-room where he can make himself thoroughly 
at home and bring his artist friends; he likes her 
because he is not bound to her, and he has never 
tired of her because she was never his. 

Spring comes. They make expeditions round 
about Paris, and are constantly together; she is 
in a state of nervous excitement, and the more 
she feels drawn towards him the more she tries 
to avoid him. There are moments when he too 
feels his hand tremble, if by chance it comes into 
contact with hers. Their friendship with one 
another has become a hindrance to any greater 
friendship between them ; and he is too much 
taken up with himself, too accustomed to have 
her always busily attending to him, to notice the 
change which is gradually taking place in her. 



Neurotic Keynotes 77 

Her love dwindles beneath the cold influence of 
doubt, which increases the more as she feels her- 
self rejected by the man she loves. Ignorant 
though she be, she is possessed of an intuitive 
knowledge which is the heritage of many gener- 
ations of culture, which enables her to read 
him through and through, until she conceives 
an antipathy for him, — the man whose love she 
desires, — an antipathy which makes him appear 
contemptible and almost ridiculous in her sight. 
Still she clings to him. She has no one else; 
she is alone among strangers. He belongs to her 
and she to him. This fact of their belonging to 
each other makes her tire of his company, and 
one day, when he and his literary friends are pre- 
paring to hold lectures in her drawing-room, she 
flies from the house to escape from their aesthetic 
chatter. 

At last she can stand it no longer, and whilst 
her guests are engaged in discussing a work of 
Mark's, she goes downstairs and out into the 
night. She scarcely knows what she is doing; 
her pulse beats feverishly, her nerves are quite 
unstrung. She walks down the street towards 
the Champs Elysees, and there she meets a man 
coming towards her. She perceives that she is 
alone in the empty street, and she is overcome 
with a nameless fear. Seized with a sudden im- 
pulse to hide herself, she jumps into the nearest 
cab, which is standing at the door of a cafe. The 
driver asks, "Where to?" and when she does not 



78 Six Modern Women 

reply, he gets angry. At this juncture the man 
appears at the door of the carriage, and she recog- 
nizes Imre Borogh, a friend of Mark's, who was 
on his way to call on her. She still cannot say 
where she wishes to go, but feeling herself under 
the protection of a friend, she allows him to get 
in. They drive and drive. She perceives the 
compromising nature of the situation, but is too 
stupefied to put an end to it. He talks to her 
after the manner of an emotional young man, 
whose feelings have gained the mastery over him. 
At last he tells the driver to stop in front of a 
cafe. She is half unconscious, but he assists her 
to get out. And the nervous strain of these many 
long months results in a misunderstanding with 
this stranger, even greater than would have been 
the case with Mark. 

She comes very quietly home. She takes hold 
of Mark's portrait, as she has so often done be- 
fore, and compares it with her own image in the 
looking-glass. She throws it away. She burns 
his letters and all the little mementos which she 
has of him, then — while she is searching in her 
drawers — she comes upon a revolver . . . 

Mark was very much moved at the funeral, and 
he cherished her memory for long afterwards. 

Nowhere in the book is there any attempt made 
to describe men. The authoress only shows them 
to us as they are reflected in her soul. In this 
she not only shows an unusual amount of artistic 
talent, but also a new method. Woman is the 



Neurotic Keynotes 79 

most subjective of all creatures; she can only 
write about her own feelings, and her expres- 
sion of them is her most valuable contribution to 
literature. Formerly women's writings were, for 
the most part, either directly or indirectly, the 
expression of a great falsehood. They were so 
overpoweringly impersonal, it was quite comic to 
see the way in which they imitated men's models, 
both in form and contents. Now that woman is 
conscious of her individuality as a woman, she 
needs an artistic mode of expression; she flings 
aside the old forms, and seeks for new. It is 
with this feeling, almost Bacchanalian in its 
intensity, that Mrs. Egerton hurls forth her play- 
ful stories, which the English critics judged 
harshly, but the public bought and called for in 
fresh editions; and this was how the Austrian 
lady wrote her story, which has the effect of a 
play dreamed under the influence of the sordine. 
Both books are honest. The more conscious a 
woman is of her individuality, the more honest 
will her confession be. Honesty is only another 
form of pride. 

Ill 

Another characteristic is beginning to make 
itself felt, which was bound to come at last. And 
that is an intense and morbid consciousness of the 
ego in women. This consciousness was unknown 
to our mothers and grandmothers ; they may have 



80 Six Modern Women 

had stronger characters than ours, as they un- 
doubtedly had to overcome greater hindrances; 
but this consciousness of the ego is quite another 
thing, and they had not got it. 

Neither of these women, whose books I have 
been reviewing, are authors by profession. There 
is nothing they care for less than to write books, 
and nothing that they desire less than to hear 
their names on every one's lips. Both were able 
to write without having learned. Other author- 
esses of whom we hear have either taught them- 
selves to write, or have been taught by men. 
They began with an object, but without having 
anything to say; they chose their subjects from 
without. 

Neither of these women have any object. They 
do not want to describe what they have seen. 
They do not want to teach the world, nor do they 
try to improve it. They have nothing to fight 
against. They merely put themselves into their 
books. They did not even begin with the inten- 
tion of writing; they obeyed an impulse. There 
was no question of whether they wished or not ; 
they were obliged. The moment came when they 
were forced to write, and they did not concern 
themselves with reasons or objects. Their ego 
burst forth with such power that it ignored all 
outer circumstances; it pressed forward and crys- 
tallized itself into an artistic shape. These women 
have not only a very pronounced style of their 
own, but are in fact artists; they became it as 



Neurotic Keynotes Si 

soon as they took up the pen. They had nothing 
to learn, it was theirs already. 

This is not only a new phase in the work 
of literary production, it is also a new phase in 
woman's nature. Formerly, not only all great 
authoresses, but likewise all prominent women, 
were — or tried to be — intellectual. That also 
was an attempt to accommodate themselves to 
men's wishes. They were always trying to fol- 
low in the footsteps of the man. Man's ideas, 
interests, speculations, were to be understood and 
sympathized with. When philosophy was the 
fashion, great authoresses and intelligent women 
philosophized. Because Goethe was wise, Rahel 
was filled with the wisdom of life. George Eliot 
preached in all her books, and philosophized all 
her life long after the manner of Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer. George Sand was the receptacle 
for ideas — men's ideas — of the most contradic- 
tory character, which she immediately reproduced 
in her novels. Good Ebner-Eschenbach writes as 
sensibly, and with as much tolerance, as a right 
worthy old gentleman; and Fru Leffler chose 
her subjects from among the problems which 
were being discussed by a few well-known men. 
None of their writings can be considered as essen- 
tially characteristic of women. It was not an 
altogether unjust assertion when men declared 
that the women who wrote books were only half 
women. 

Yet these were the best Others, who wrote 
6 



82 Six Modern Women 

as women, had no connection with literature at 
all; they merely knitted literary stockings. 

Mrs. Egerton and the author of " Dilettantes " 
are not intellectual, not in the very least. The 
possibility of being it has never entered their 
brain. They had no ambition to imitate men. 
They are not in the least impressed by the specu- 
lations, ideas, theories, and philosophies of men. 
They are sceptics in all that concerns the mind; 
the man himself they can perceive. 

They perceive his soul, his inner self, — when 
he has one, — and they are keenly sensitive when 
it is not there. The other women with the great 
names are quite thick-headed in comparison. 
They judge everything with the understanding; 
these perceive with the nerves, and that is an 
entirely different kind of understanding. 

They understand man, but, at the same time, 
they perceive that he is quite different from 
themselves, that he is the contrast to themselves. 
The one is too highly cultured; the other has too 
sensitive a nervous system to permit the thought 
of any equality between man and woman. The 
idea makes them laugh. They are far too con- 
scious of being refined, sensitive women. They 
do not concern themselves with the modern 
democratic tendencies regarding women, with its 
levelling of contrasts, its desire for equality. 
They live their own life, and if they find it 
unsatisfying, empty, disappointing, they cannot 
change it. But they do not make any compro- 



Neurotic Keynotes $$ 

mise to do things by halves ; their highly devel- 
oped nerves are too sure a standard to allow of 
that. They are a new race of women, more 
resigned, more hopeless, and more sensitive than 
the former ones. They are women such as the 
new men require; they have risen up on the 
intellectual horizon as the forerunners of a gen- 
eration who will be more sensitive, and who 
will have a keener power of enjoyment than the 
former ones. Among themselves these women 
exchange sympathetic glances, and are able to 
understand one another without need of confes- 
sion. They, with their highly-developed nerves, 
can feel for each other with a sympathy such as 
formerly a woman only felt for man. In this 
way they go through life, without building castles 
in the air, or making any plans for the future; 
they live on day by day,, and never look beyond. 
It might be said that they are waiting; but as 
each new day arrives, and the sand of time falls 
drop by drop upon their delicate nerves, even 
this imperceptible burden is more than they can 
bear ; the strain of it is too much for them. 



IV 

I have before me a new book by Mrs. Egerton, 
and two new photographs. In the one she is 
sitting curled up in a chair, reading peacefully. 
She has a delicate, rather sharp-featured profile, 



84 Six Modern Women 

with a long, somewhat prominent chin, that gives 
one an idea of yearning. The other is a full- 
length portrait. A slender, girlish figure, with 
narrow shoulders, and a waist, if anything, rather 
too small ; a tired, worn face, without youth and 
full of disillusion ; the hair looks as though rest- 
less fingers had been passed through it, and there 
is a bitter, hopeless expression about the lines of 
the mouth. In her letters — in which we never 
wholly possess her, but merely her mood— she 
comes to us in various guises, — now as a playful 
kitten, that is curled up cosily, and sometimes 
stretches out a soft little paw in playful, tender 
need of a caress ; or else she is a worried, disap- 
pointed woman, with overwrought and excitable 
nerves, sceptical in the possibility of content, a 
seeker, for whom the charm lies in the seeking, 
not in the finding. She is a type of the modern 
woman, whose inmost being is the essence of 
disillusion. 

When we examine the portraits of the four prin- 
cipal characters in this book — Sonia Kovalevsky, 
Eleonora Duse, Marie Bashkirtseff, and George 
Egerton — we find that they all have one feature 
in common. It was not I who first noticed this, 
it was a man. Ola Hansson, seeing them lying 
together one day, pointed it out to me, and he 
said : " The lips of all four speak the same lan- 
guage, — the young girl, the great tragedian, the 
woman of intellect, and the neurotic writer; each 
one has a something about the corners of the 



Neurotic Keynotes 85 

mouth that expresses a wearied satiety, mingled 
with an unsatisfied longing, as though she had as 
yet enjoyed nothing." 

Why this wearied satiety mingled with an 
unsatisfied longing? Why should these four 
women, who are four opposites, as it were, have 
the same expression? The virgin in body and 
soul, the great creator of the roles of the degen- 
erates, the mathematical professor, and the neu- 
rotic writer? Is it something in themselves, 
something peculiar in the organic nature of their 
womanhood, or is it some influence from with- 
out ? Is it because they have chosen a profession 
which excites, while it leaves them dissatisfied, 
for the simple reason that a profession can never 
wholly satisfy a woman? Yet these four have 
excelled in their profession. But can a woman 
ever obtain satisfaction by means of her achieve- 
ments ? Is not her life as a woman — as a wife 
and as a mother — the true source of all her hap- 
piness? And this touch of disillusion in all of 
them — is it the disillusion they have experienced 
as woman; is it the expression of their bitter 
experiences in the gravest moment in a woman's 
life? Disappointment in man? The man that 
fate thrust across their path, who was their ex- 
perience? And their yearning is now fruitless, 
for the flower of expectant realization withered 
before they plucked it. 

Two of these women have carried the secret of 
their faces with them to the grave, but the others 



86 Six Modern Women 

live and are not willing to reveal it. George 
Egerton would like to be as silent about it as 
they are; but her nerves speak, and her nerves 
have betrayed her secret in the book called 
"Discords." 

When we read " Discords " we ask ourselves 
how is it possible that this frail little woman 
could write such a strong, brutal book? In 
"Keynotes" Mrs. Egerton was still a little 
coquette, with 5^ gloves and 18-inch waist, who 
herself played a fascinating part. She had some- 
thing of a midge's nature, dancing up and down, 
and turning nervous somersaults in the sunshine. 
"Discords" is certainly a continuation of "Key- 
notes," but it is quite another kind of woman 
who meets us here. The thrilling, nervous note 
of the former book has changed into a clashing, 
piercing sound, hard as metal ; it is the voice of 
an accuser in whom all bitterness takes the form 
of reproaches which are unjust, and yet unanswer- 
able. It is the voice of a woman who is con- 
scious of being ill-treated and driven to despair, 
and who speaks in spite of herself in the name of 
thousands of ill-treated and despairing women. 
Who can tell us whether her nerves have ill- 
treated this woman and driven her to despair, or 
whether it is her outward fate, especially her fate 
with regard to the man ? Women of this kind 
are not confidential. They take back to-morrow 
what they have confessed to-day, partly from a 
wish not to let themselves be understood, and 



Neurotic Keynotes 87 

partly because the aspect of their experiences 
varies with every change of mood, like the colors 
in a kaleidoscope. 

But throughout these changes, one single note 
is maintained in "Discords," as it was in "Key- 
notes." In the latter it was a high, shrill treble, 
like the song of a bird in spring; in "Discords" 
it is a deep bass note, groaning in distress with 
the groan of a disappointed woman. 



V 

The tone of bitter disappointment which per- 
vades "Discords" is the expression of woman's 
disappointment in man. Man and man's love 
are not a joy to her; they are a torment. He 
is inconsiderate in his demands, brutal in his 
caresses, and unsympathetic with those sides of 
her nature which are not there for his satisfac- 
tion. He is no longer the great comic animal 
of "Keynotes," whom the woman teases and 
plays with — he is a nightmare which smothers 
her during horrible nights, a hangman who tor- 
tures her body and soul during days and years 
for his pleasure; a despot who demands admira- 
tion, caresses, and devotion, while her every nerve 
quivers with an opposite emotion; a man born 
blind, whose clumsy fingers press the spot where 
the pain is, and when she moans, replies with 
coarse, unfeeling laughter, " Absurd nonsense ! " 



88 Six Modern Women 

Although I believed myself to be acquainted 
with all the books which women have written 
against men, no book that I have ever read has 
impressed me with such a vivid sense of physical 
pain. Most women come with reasonings, moral 
sermons, and outbursts of temper: a man may 
allow himself much that is forbidden to others, 
that must be altered. Women are of no impor- 
tance in his eyes; he has permitted himself to 
look down upon them. They intend to teach 
him their importance. They are determined that 
he shall look up to them. But here we have no 
trace of Xantippe-like violence, only a woman 
who holds her trembling hands to the wounds 
which man has inflicted upon her, of which the 
pain is intensified each time that he draws near. 
A woman, driven to despair, who jumps upon 
him like a wild-cat, and seizes him by the throat ; 
and if that does not answer, chooses for herself 
a death that is ten times more painful than life 
with him, chooses it in order that she may have 
her own way. 

What is this? It is not the well-known domes- 
tic animal which we call woman. It is a wild 
creature belonging to a wild race, untamed and 
untamable, with the yellow gleam of a wild 
animal in its eyes. It is a nervous, sensitive 
creature, whose primitive wildness is awakened 
by a blow which it has received, which bursts 
forth, revengeful and pitiless as the lightning 
in the night. 



Neurotic Keynotes 89 

That is what I like about this book. That a 
woman should have sprung up, who with her 
instinct can bore to the bottom layers of woman- 
hood the quality that enables her to renew the 
race, her primaeval quality, which man, with 
all his understanding, has never penetrated. A 
few years ago, in a study on Gottfried Keller's 
women, I mentioned wildness as the basis of 
woman's nature; Mrs. Egerton has given utter- 
ance to the same opinion in "Keynotes," and has 
since tried to embody it in "Discords; " her best 
stories are those where the wild instinct breaks 
loose. 

But why this terror of man, this physical repul- 
sion, as in the story called "Virgin Soil " ? The 
authoress says that it is because an ignorant girl 
in her complete innocence is handed over in mar- 
riage to an exacting husband. But that is not 
reason enough. The authoress's intellect is not 
as true as her instinct. There must be some- 
thing more. The same may be said of " Wed- 
lock," where the boarding-house cook marries an 
amorous working-man, who is in receipt of good 
wages, for the sake of having her illegitimate 
child to live with her; he refuses to allow it, and 
when the child dies of a childish ailment, she 
murders his two children by the first marriage. 

Mrs. Egerton' s stories are not invented ; neither 
are they realistic studies copied from the notes 
in her diary. They are experiences. She has 
lived them all, because the people whom she por- 



90 Six Modern Women 

trays have impressed their characters or their 
fate upon her quivering nerves. The music of 
her nerves has sounded like the music of a 
stringed instrument beneath the touch of a 
strange hand, as in that masterpiece, "Gone 
Under," where the woman tells her story be- 
tween the throes of sea-sickness and drunken- 
ness. The man to whom she belongs has pun- 
ished her unfaithfulness by the murder of her 
child, and she revenges herself by drunkenness ; 
yet, in spite of it all, he remains the master 
whom she is powerless to punish, and in her 
despair she throws herself upon the streets. 

Only one man has had sufficient instinct to 
bring to light this abyss in woman's nature, and 
that is Barbey d'Aurevilly, the poet who was 
never understood. But in Mrs. Egerton's book 
there is one element which he had not discovered, 
and, although she does not express it in words, it 
shows itself in her description of men and women. 
Her men are Englishmen with bull-dog natures, 
but the women belong to another race; and is 
not this horror, this physical repulsion, this 
woman raging against the man, a true represen- 
tation of the way that the Anglo-Saxon nature 
reacts upon the Celtic? 

Two races stand opposed to one another in 
these sketches; perhaps the authoress herself is 
not quite conscious of it, but it is plainly visible 
in her descriptions of character, where we have 
the heavy, massive Englishman, V animal male, 



Neurotic Keynotes 91 

and the untamable woman who is prevented by 
race instinct from loving where she ought to love. 
In "The Regeneration of Two," Mrs. Egerton 
has tried to describe a Celtic woman where she 
can love, but the attempt is most unsuccessful, 
for here we see plainly that she lacked the basis 
of experience. There are, however, many women 
who know what love is, although they have never 
experienced it. Men came, they married, but 
the man for them never came. 



VI 

There is a little story in this collection called 
"Her Share," where the style is full of tender- 
ness, perhaps even a trifle too sweet. It affects 
one like a landscape on an evening in early 
autumn, when the sun has gone down and twi- 
light reigns; it seems as though veiled in gray, 
for there is no color left, although everything is 
strangely clear. Mrs. Egerton has a peculiarly 
gentle touch and soft voice where she describes 
the lonely, independent working girl. Her little 
story is often nothing more than the fleeting 
shadow of a mood, but the style is sustained 
throughout in a warm stream of lyric; for this 
Celtic woman certainly has the lyrical faculty, a 
thing which a woman writer rarely has, if ever, 
possessed before. There is something in her 
writing which seems to express a desire to draw 



92 Six Modern Women 

near to the lonely girl and say: "You have such 
a good time of it in your grayness. In Grayness 
your nerves find rest, your instincts slumber, no 
man ill-treats you with his love, you experience 
discontent in contentment, but you know noth- 
ing of the torture of unstrung nerves. Would 
I were like you; but I am a bundle of electric 
currents bursting forth in all directions into 
chaos." 

Besides these two dainty twilight sketches, she 
has others like the description in "Gone Under," 
of the storm on that voyage from America to 
England where we imagine ourselves on board 
ship, and seem to feel the rolling sea, to hear 
the ship cracking and groaning, to smell the 
hundreds of fetid smells escaping from all cor- 
ners, and the damp ship-biscuits and the taste of 
the bitter salt spray on the tongue. We owe this 
forcible and matter-of-fact method of reprodu- 
cing the impressions received by the senses to the 
retentive power of her nerves, through which she 
is able to preserve her passing impressions and 
to reproduce them in their full intensity. She 
relies on her womanly receptive faculty, not on* 
her brain. 

George Egerton's life has been of the kind 
which affords ample material for literary pur- 
poses, and it is probable that she has more raw 
material ready for use at any time when she may 
require it; but at present she retains it in her 



Neurotic Keynotes 93 

nerves, as it were, under lock and key. She had 
intended from childhood to become an artist, and 
writing is only an afterthought; yet, no sooner 
did she begin to write than the impressions and 
experiences of her life shaped themselves into 
the form of her two published works. Until the 
publication of "Discords," we had thought that 
she was one of those intensely individualistic 
writers who write one book because they must, 
but never write another, or, at any rate, not one 
that will bear comparison with the first ; the pub- 
lication of "Discords" has entirely dispelled this 
opinion, and has given us good reason to hope for 
many more works from her pen. 



Ill 

The Modern Woman on the Stage 



I 

A lean figure, peculiarly attractive, though 
scarcely to be called beautiful; a melancholy 
face with a strangely sweet expression, no longer 
young, yet possessed of a pale, wistful charm ; la 
femme de trente ans, who has lived and suffered, 
and who knows that life is full of suffering; 
a woman without any aggressive self-confidence, 
yet queenly, gentle, and subdued in manner, with 
a pathetic voice, — such is Eleonora Duse as she 
appeared in the parts which she created for her- 
self out of modern pieces. When first I saw her, 
I tried to think of some one with whom to com- 
pare her; I turned over in my mind the names of 
all the greatest actresses in the last ten years or 
more, and wondered whether any of them could 
be said to be her equal, or to have surpassed 
her. But neither Wolter nor Bernhardt, neither 
Ellmenreich nor the best actresses of the Theatre 
Frangais, could be compared with her. The French 
and German actresses were entirely different; 
they seemed to stand apart, each complete in 
themselves — while she too stood apart, complete 
in herself. They represented a world of their 
own and a perfected civilization; and she, though 

7 



98 Six Modern Women 

like them in some ways, seemed to represent 
the genesis of a world, and a civilization in 
embryo. This was not merely the result of com- 
paring an Italian with French and German, and 
one school with another, — it was the woman's 
temperament compared to that of others, her 
acute susceptibility, compared to which her cele- 
brated predecessors impressed one as being too 
massive, almost too crude, and one might be 
tempted to add, less womanly. Many of them 
have possessed a more versatile genius than hers, 
and nearly all have had greater advantages at 
their disposal; but the moment that we compare 
them to Duse, their loud, convulsive art sud- 
denly assumes the appearance of one of those 
gigantic pictures by Makart, once so fiery colored 
and now so faded ; and if we compare the famous 
dramatic artists of the seventies and eighties 
with Duse, we might as well compare a splendid 
festal march played with many instruments to a 
violin solo floating on the still night air. 

The pieces acted by Eleonora Duse at Berlin, 
where I saw her, were mainly chosen to suit the 
public taste, and they differed in nothing from 
the usual virtuosa programme. These consisted 
of Sarah Bernhardt' s favorite parts, such as 
"Fedora," "La Dame aux Camelias," and pieces 
taken from the repertoire of the Theatre Francais, 
such as "Francillon" and "Divorgons," varied 
with " Cavalleria Rusticana," and such well- 
known plays as " Locandiera," "Fernande," and 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 99 

"The Doll's House." She did not act Shake- 
speare, and there she was wise; for what can 
Duse's pale face have in common with the exu- 
berant spirits and muscular strength of the 
women of the Renaissance, whose own rich life- 
blood shone red before their eyes and drove them 
to deeds of love and vengeance, which it makes 
the ladies of our time ill to hear described. But 
she also neglected some pieces which must have 
suited her better than her French repertoire. She 
did not give us Marco Praga's "Modest Girls," 
where Paulina's part seems expressly created for 
her, nor his "Ideal Wife," into which she might 
have introduced some of her own instinctive phi- 
losophy. Neither did she act the " Tristi Amori " 
of her celebrated fellow-countryman, Giuseppe 
Giacosa. 

And yet, in the parts which she did act, she 
opened to us a new world, which had no existence 
before, because it was her own. It was the world 
of her own soul, the ever-changing woman's world, 
which no one before her has ever expressed on 
the stage; she gave us the secret, inner life of 
woman, which no poet can wholly fathom, and 
which only woman herself can reveal, which with 
more refined nerves and more sensitive and varied 
feelings has emerged bleeding from the older, 
coarser, narrower forms of art, to newer, brighter 
forms, which, though more powerful, are also 
more wistful and more hopeless. 



ioo Six Modern Women 



II 



Eleonora Duse has a strangely wearied look. 
It is not the weariness of exhaustion or apathy, 
nor is it the weariness natural to an overworked 
actress, although there are times when she suffers 
from that to so great an extent that she acts 
indifferently the whole evening, and makes the 
part a failure. Neither is it the weariness of 
despondency which gives the voice a hollow, 
artificial sound, which is noticeable in all vir- 
tuosas when they are over-tired. Neither is it 
the utter prostration resulting from passion, like 
the drowsiness of beasts of prey, which our tragic 
actors and actresses delight in. Passion, the so- 
called great passion, which, according to an old 
legend recounted in one of the Greek tragedies, 
comes like the whirlwind, and leaves nothing 
behind but death and dried bones — passion such 
as that is unknown to Duse. Brunhild, Medea, 
Messalina, and all the ambitious, imperious prin- 
cesses of historic drama are nothing to her; she 
is no princess or martyr of ancient history, but a 
princess in her own right, and a martyr of cir- 
cumstances. Throughout her acting there is a 
feeling of surprise that she should suffer and be 
martyred, accompanied by the dim knowledge 
that it must be so — and it is that which gives 
her soul its weary melancholy. For it is not her 
body, nor her senses, nor her mind which give 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 101 

the appearance of having just awoke from a deep 
lethargy; the weariness is all in her soul, and it 
is that which gives her a soft, caressing, trustful 
manner, as though she felt lonely, and yearned for 
a little sympathy. Love is full of sympathy, and 
that is why Eleonora Duse acts love. Not greedy 
love, which asks more than it gives, like Walter's 
and Bernhardt's; not sensual love, nor yet impe- 
rious love, like the big woman who takes pity 
on the little man, whom it pleases her to make 
happy. When Duse is in love, even in " Fedora," 
it is always she who is the little woman, and the 
man is for her the big man, the giver, who holds 
her happiness in his hands, to whose side she 
steals anxiously, almost timidly, and looks up at 
him with her serious, wearied, almost child-like 
smile. She comes to him for protection and 
shelter, just as travellers are wont to gather 
round a warm fire, and she clings to him caress- 
ingly with her thin little hands, — the hands of a 
child and mother. Never has woman been repre- 
sented in a more womanly way than by Eleonora 
Duse ; and more than that, I take it upon myself 
to maintain that woman has never been repre- 
sented upon the stage until now — by Eleonora 
Duse. 

She shows us the everlasting child in woman, 
— in the full-grown, experienced woman, who is 
possessed of an erotic yearning for fulness of life. 
Woman is not, and cannot be, happy by herself, 
nor is the sacrifice of a moment enough for her; 



102 Six Modern Women 

it is not enough for her to live by the side of the 
man; a husband's tenderness is as necessary to 
her as the air she breathes. His passion, lit by 
her, is her life and happiness. He gives her the 
love in which her life can blossom into a fair and 
beautiful flower. And she accepts him, not with 
the silly innocence of a child, not with the igno- 
rance of girlhood, not with the ungoverned pas- 
sion of a mistress, not with the condescending 
forbearance of the "superior woman," not with 
the brotherly affection of the manly woman, — we 
have had ample opportunity of seeing and benefit- 
ing by such representations as those in every 
theatre, and in every tongue, since first we began 
to see and to think. They include every type 
of womanhood as understood and represented by 
actresses great and small. But into all this, Duse 
introduces a new element, something which was 
formerly only a matter of secondary importance on 
the stage, which, by the "highest art," was judged 
in the light of a juggler's trick, and was con- 
sidered by the lower art as little more than a 
valuable ingredient. She makes it the main- 
string on which her acting vibrates, the keynote 
without which her art would have no meaning. 
She accepts the man with the whole-hearted sin- 
cerity of an experienced woman, who shrinks from 
the loneliness of life, and longs to lose herself in 
the loved one. She has the dreadful sensation 
that a human being has nothing but minutes, 
minutes; that there is nothing lasting to rely on; 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 103 

that we swim across dark waters from yesterday 
until to-morrow, and our unfulfilled desires are 
less terrible than the feverish anxiety with which 
we anticipate the future in times of prosperity. 

EleonoraDuse's acting tells of infinite suspense. 

Her entire art rests on this one note, — Sus- 
pense : which means that we know nothing, possess 
nothing, can do nothing ; that everything is ruled 
by chance, and the whole of life is one great un- 
certainty. This terrible insecurity stands as a 
perfect contrast to the " cause and effect " theory 
'of the schools, which trust in God and logic, and 
offer a secure refuge to the playwright's art. 
This mysterious darkness, from whence she steps 
forward like a sleep-walker, gives a sickly color- 
ing to her actions. There is something timid 
about her; she seems to have an almost supersti- 
tious dislike of a shrill sound, or a brilliant color; 
and this peculiarity of hers finds expression not 
only in her acting, but also in her dress. 

We seldom see toilets on the stage which reveal 
a more individual taste. Just as Duse never acted 
anything but what was in her own soul, she never 
attempted any disguise of her body. Her own 
face was the only mask she wore when I saw her 
act. The expression of her features, the deep 
lines on her cheeks, the melancholy mouth, the 
sunken eyes with their large heavy lids, were all 
characteristic of the part. She always had the 
same black, broad, arched eyebrows, the same 
wavy, shiny black Italian hair, which was always 



ic>4 Six Modern Women 

done up in a modest knot, sometimes high, some- 
times a little lower, from which two curls always 
escaped during the course of her acting, because 
she had a habit of brushing her forehead with a 
white and rather bony hand, as though every 
violent emotion made her head ache. 

No jewel glittered against her sallow skin, and 
she wore no ornament on her dress; there was 
something pathetic in the unconcealed thinness 
of her neck and throat. She was of medium 
height, a slender body with broad hips, without 
any signs of the rounded waist which belongs to 
the fashionable figure of the drama. She wore no 
stays, and there was nothing to hinder the slow, 
graceful, musical movements of her somewhat 
scanty figure. She made frequent gestures with 
her arms which were perfectly natural in her, 
although her Italian vivacity sometimes gave 
them a grotesque appearance. But it was the 
grace of her form, rather than her gestures, which 
called attention to the natural stateliness of her 
person. As to her dresses, they were not in the 
least fashionable, there was nothing of the French 
fashion-plate style about them ; but then she never 
made any attempt to follow the fashion, — she set 
it. There was an antique look about the long 
soft- folds of her dress, also something suggestive 
of the Renaissance in the velvet bodices and low 
lace collars. 

But her arrangement of color was new; it was 
not copied either from the antique or the Renais- 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 105 

sance, and it was certainly not in accordance with 
the present-day fashion. She never wore red, — 
with the exception of Nora's shabby blouse, — nor 
bright yellow, nor blue ; never, in fact, any strong, 
deep color. The hues which she affected most 
were black and white in all materials, whether 
for dresses or cloaks. She always wore pale, 
cream-colored lace, closely folded across her 
breast, from whence her dress fell loosely to the 
ground; she never wore a waist-band of any kind 
whatever. 

She sometimes wore pale bronze, faded violet, 
and quiet myrtle green in soft materials of velvet 
and silk. There was an air of mourning about 
her dresses which might have suited any age 
except merry youth, and that note was entirely 
absent from her art, for she was never merry. 
She had a happy look sometimes, but she was 
never merry or noisy on the stage. I have twice 
seen her in a hat ; and they were sober hats, such 
as a widow might wear. 



Ill 

I saw Duse for the first time as "Nora." 1 I was 
sorry for it, as I did not think that an Italian 
could act the part of a heroine with such an 
essentially northern temperament. I have never 
had an opportunity of seeing Frau Ramlo, who is 

1 " A Doll's House," by Henrik Ibsen. 



106 Six Modern Women 

considered the best Nora on the German stage, 
but I have seen Ibsen's Nora, Fru Hennings of 
the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen, and I retained 
a vivid picture of her acting in my mind. Fru 
Hennings' Nora was a nervous little creature, 
with fair hair and sharp features, very neat and 
piquante, but dressed cheaply and not always with 
the best taste; she was the regular tradesman's 
daughter, with meagre purse and many preten- 
sions, whose knowledge of life was bounded by 
the narrow prejudices of the parlor. There was 
something undeveloped about this Nora, with her 
senseless chatter, something almost pitiable in 
her admiration for the self-important Helmer, 
and something childish in her conception of his 
hidden heroism. There was also a natural, and 
perhaps inherited tendency for dishonest deal- 
ings, and a well-bred, forced cheerfulness which 
took the form of hopping and jumping in a 
coquettish manner, because she knew that it 
became her. When the time comes that she is 
obliged to face life with its realities, her feeble 
brain becomes quite confused, and she hops round 
the room in her tight stays, with her fringe and 
high-heeled boots, till, nervous and void of self- 
control as she is, she excites herself into the 
wildest apprehensions. This apprehension was 
the masterpiece of Fru Hennings' masterly act- 
ing. She kept the mind fixed on a single point, 
which had all the more powerful effect in that it 
was so characteristically depicted, — she showed 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 107 

us the way by which a respectable tradesman's 
daughter may be driven to the madhouse or to 
suicide. But when the change takes place, and 
a fully developed, argumentative, woman's rights 
woman jumps down upon the little goose, then 
even Fru Hennings' undoubted art was not equal 
to the occasion. The part fell to pieces, and two 
Noras remained, connected only by a little thread, 
— the miraculous. Fru Hennings disappears with 
an unspoken an revoir! 

When Eleonora Duse comes upon the stage as 
Nora, she is a pale, unhealthy-looking woman, 
with a very quiet manner. She examines her 
purse thoughtfully, and before paying the servant 
she pauses involuntarily, as poor people usually 
do before they spend money. And when she 
throws off her shabby fur cloak and fur cap, she 
appears as a thin, black-haired Italian woman, 
clad in an old, ill-fitting red blouse. She plays 
with the children, without any real gayety, as 
grown-up people are in the habit of playing 
when their thoughts are otherwise occupied. 
Fru Linden enters, and to her she tells her 
whole history with true Italian volubility, but in 
an absent manner, like a person who is not think- 
ing of what she is saying. She likes best to sit 
on the floor — very unlike women of her class — 
and to busy herself with the Christmas things. 
In the scene with Helmer an expression of sub- 
missive tenderness comes over her, she likes to 
be with him, she feels as though his presence 



108 Six Modern Women 

afforded her protection, and she nestles to his 
side, more like a sick person than a child. 

The scenes which are impressed with Nora's 
modern nervousness come and go, but Duse 
never becomes nervous. The many emotional 
and sudden changes which take place, the un- 
reasonable actions and other minor peculiarities 
of a child of the bourgeois decadence, — these do 
not concern her. Duse never acts the nervous 
woman, either here or elsewhere. She does not 
act it, because she has too true and delicate a 
nervous susceptibility. She can act the most 
passionate feelings, and she often does so; but 
she never acts a capricious, nervous disposition. 
She has too refined a taste for that, and her soul 
is too full of harmony. 

Ibsen's Nora is hysterical, and only half a 
woman; and that is what he, with his poetic 
intuition, intended her to be. Eleonora Duse's 
Nora is a complete woman. Crushed by want 
and living in narrow surroundings, there is a 
certain obtuseness about her which renders her 
willing to subject herself to new misfortunes. 
There is also something of the child in her, as 
there is in every true woman ; but even in her 
child-like moments she is a sad child. Then the 
misfortune happens ! But, strange to say, she 
makes no desperate attempt to resist it ; she gives 
no hysterical cry of fear, as a meaner soul would 
do in the struggle for life. There is something 
pitiable in a struggle such as that, where power 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 109 

and will are so disproportionately unlike. Duse's 
Nora hastily suppresses the first suggestion of 
fear; but she does not admire her muff mean- 
while, like Fru Hennings. She merely repeats 
to herself over and over again in answer to her 
thoughts : " No, no ! " I never heard any one say 
"no" like her; it contains a whole world of 
human feeling. But all through the night she 
hears fate say " Yes, yes ! " and the next day, 
which is Christmas Day, she is overcome with a 
fatalistic feeling. She dresses herself for the 
festival, but not with cheap rags like Nora; she 
wears an expensive dark green dress, which hangs 
down in rich graceful folds. It is her only best 
dress, and sets off her figure to perfection; it 
makes her look tall and slender, but also very 
weary. And as the play goes on, she becomes 
even more weary and more resigned, and when 
death comes, there is no help for it. Then, after 
the rehearsal of the tarantella, when Helmer calls 
to her from the dining-room and she knows that 
fate can no longer be averted, she leaps through 
the air into his arms with a cry of joy, — to look 
at her one would think that she was one of those 
thin, wild, joyless Bacchantes whose bas-reliefs 
have come down to us from the later period of 
Grecian art. 

The third act : — Nora and Helmer return from 
the mask ball. She is absent-minded and quite 
indifferent to everything that goes on around her. 
That which she knows is going to happen, is to 



no Six Modern Women 

her already a thing of the past, since she has 
endured it all in anticipation ; her actions in the 
matter are only mechanical. 

When Helmer goes to empty the letter-box, she 
does not try to stop him with a hundred excuses, 
she scarcely makes a weak movement to hold him 
back ; she knows that it must come, nothing that 
she can do will prevent it. While Helmer reads 
the letter, she stands pale and motionless, and 
when he rushes at her, she throws on her mantle 
and leaves the room without another word. 

He drags her back and overwhelms her with 
reproaches, in which the pitiful meanness of his 
soul is laid bare. Now Duse's acting begins in 
earnest, now the dramatic moment has come — 
the only moment in the drama — for the sake of 
which she took the part. 

She stands by the fireplace, with her face 
towards the audience, and does not move a muscle 
until he has finished speaking. She says noth- 
ing, she never interrupts him. Only her eyes 
speak. He runs backwards and forwards, up and 
down the room, while she follows him with her 
large, suffering eyes, which have an unnatural 
look in them, follows him backwards and for- 
wards in unutterable surprise, — a surprise which 
seems to have fallen from heaven, and which 
changes little by little into an unutterable, incon- 
ceivable disappointment, and that again into an 
indescribably bitter, sickening contempt. And 
into her eyes comes at last the question: "Who 



The Modern Woman on the Stage m 

are you? What have you got to do with me? 
What do you want here? What are you talking 
about?" 

The other letter drops into the letter-box, and 
Helmer loads her with tender, patronizing words. 
But she does not hear him. She is no longer look- 
ing at him. What does the chattering creature 
want now ? She does not know him at all. She 
has never loved him. There was once a man 
whose sympathy she possessed, and who was her 
protector. That man is no more, and she has 
never loved any one! 

She turns away with a gesture of displeasure, 
and goes to change her clothes, anxious to get 
away as quickly as possible. He stops her. 
What then ? The woman is awake in her. She 
is a woman in the moment of a woman's greatest 
ignominy, — when she discovers that she does not 
love. What does he want with her? Why does 

he raise objections? He ? Tant de bruit 

pour une omelette! She throws him a few indif- 
ferent words, shrugs her shoulders, turns her 
back upon him, and goes quickly out at the door. 
Presently we hear the front door close with a 
bang. There is no mention at all about the 
"miracle." 

That is how Duse united Nora' s double person- 
ality. Make it up ! There is no making it up 
between the man and wife, except the kiss and the 
shrug of the shoulders. She ignores Ibsen's prin- 
cipal argument. Reason, indeed? Reason has 



ii2 Six Modern Women 

never settled anything in stern reality, least of 
all as regards the relationship between husband 
and wife. One day Nora wakes up and finds that 
Helmer has become loathsome to her, and she 
runs away from him with the instinctive horror 
of a living person for a decomposed corpse. Of 
course nothing "miraculous " can happen, for that 
would mean that the living person should go mad 
and return to the corpse. 

Eleonora Duse treats all her parts in the same 
independent manner that she treats the text of 
Nora. When we are able to follow her, and that 
is by no means always, we notice how she alters 
it to suit herself, how another being comes to the 
front, — a being who has no place in the written 
words, and whom the author never thought of, 
whom he, in most cases, could certainly not have 
drawn from his own views of life and his own 
inner consciousness. Duse's heroine is more 
womanly, in the deeper sense of the word, than 
the society ladies in Ibsen's and Sardou's dramas, 
and she is not only more simple than they are, 
but also far greater. Eleonora Duse is not a 
dialectician like Ibsen and Sardou; their hair- 
splitting logic is no concern of hers, and it cer- 
tainly was not written for her. She has an 
instinctive, unerring intuition of what the part 
should be, and she throws herself into it and acts 
accordingly. She does not vary much ; she is not 
a realist who makes a careful note of every little 
peculiarity, and arranges them in a pattern of 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 113 

mosaic; she is truthful to a reckless extent, but 
not always true to the letter; sometimes like 
this, sometimes like that, she differs in the 
different parts. She is true, because she is proud 
and courageous enough to show herself as she 
really is. There is no need for her to be other- 
wise. There is danger of uniformity in this great 
simplicity of hers, and she would not escape it 
if it were not for her emotional nature, and an 
intense, almost painful sincerity, which was per- 
haps never represented on the stage before her 
time, and which was certainly never before made 
the groundwork of a woman's feelings. She 
comes to meet us half absorbed in her own 
thoughts, a complete woman, — complete in that 
indissoluble unity which is the basis of a healthy 
woman's nature: woman-child and also woman- 
mother, a woman with the stamp which is the 
result of deep, vital experience, with a woman's 
tragedy ineffaceably engraved on every feature, — 
this same woman's tragedy which she reproduces 
upon the stage. It is the fact of her not troub- 
ling herself about anything else that imbues her 
acting with an air of simplicity, and because she 
is such a complete woman herself, there is an air 
of indescribable stateliness about her acting. She 
not only simplified all that she took in hand, but 
she also improved it. For all these characters 
which she created were the result of the com- 
pleteness of her womanly nature, and that is why 
they never had but the one motive, for all the 



ii4 Six Modern Women 

evil they did, and for their hate : they revenged 
themselves for the crimen Icesce majestatis, which 
sin was committed against their womanly nature, 
and which a true woman never forgives, as when 
the priceless pearl of her womanhood has been 
misused. That is why they made no pathetic 
gestures, no noise or tragic screams, but acted 
quietly and silently, as we do a thing which is 
expected of us, with a quiet indifference, as when 
intact nature bows itself under and assists fate. 

That is how Duse acted Nora, but she acted 
Clotilde in " Fernande " in the same mood, also 
Odette in the play, called by the same name, both 
by Sardou, and that was more difficult. Clotilde 
and Odette are a couple of vulgar people. Clotilde, 
a widow of distinction, revenges herself upon a 
young man of proud and noble family, who has 
been her lover for many years, but has broken 
his marriage vows, by encouraging his attachment 
for a dishonored girl, whom she persuades him to 
marry, and afterwards triumphantly tells him his 
wife's history. 

Odette's husband finds her one night with her 
lover, and he turns her out of the house in the 
presence of witnesses. For several years she leads 
a dissolute life, dishonoring the name of her hus- 
band and grown-up daughter. This stain on the 
family makes it almost impossible for the latter 
to marry, and the husband offers the fallen woman 
a large sum of money to deprive her of his name. 
She agrees, on condition that she shall be allowed 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 115 

to see her daughter. She is prevented from mak- 
ing herself known to the latter, and when she 
comes away after the interview, she drowns her- 
self in a fit of hysterical self-contempt. Such 
are the contents of the two pieces into which 
Duse put her greatest and best talent. 

IV 

She comes as Clotilde into the gambling saloon, 
to inquire after the young girl whom she had 
nearly driven over. She is simply dressed, and 
has the appearance of a distinguished lady, with 
a happy and virtuous past. The manner in which 
she receives the girl in her own house, talks to 
her and puts her at her ease, was so kind and 
hearty that the audience, very unexpectedly in 
this scene, broke into a storm of applause before 
the curtain had gone down. Her lover returns 
from a journey which arouses her suspicion, and 
she, anxious not to deceive herself, elicits the 
confession that he no longer cares for her, and 
is in love with some one else. That some one 
is Fernande. He goes to look for her, finds her 
in the same house, and returns immediately. 
Clotilde thinks that he has come back to her. 
Her speechless delight must be seen, for it can- 
not be described; her whole being is suffused 
with a radiant joy, she trembles with excitement. 
When it is all made plain to her, and there is no 
longer any room for doubt, she bows her head 



n6 Six Modern Women 

over his hand for an instant, as though to kiss 
it, as she had so often done before, then she 
strokes it softly with her own. . . . She will 
never look into his face again, yet she cannot 
cease to love the dear, caressing hand, which 
calls to mind her former happiness. 

She lets things take their course, and when it 
is over she has the scene with Pomerol, when she 
defends her conduct. Duse has a form of dia- 
lectic peculiar to herself, which is neither sen- 
sible nor deliberate, but impulsive. When she 
does wrong she does it — not because she is bad, 
but because she cannot help herself. A part of 
her nature, which was the source of her life, is 
wounded and sick unto death, and a gnawing, 
burning pain compels her to commit deeds as 
dark and painful as her own heart. She goes 
about it quietly, doing it all as a matter of 
course ; to her they seem inevitable as the outer 
expression of a hidden suffering. 

She is at her best in the passionate " Fedora," 
when she represents this state of blank amaze- 
ment, mingled with despair, taking the place of 
what has been love. If she afterwards comes 
across the French cynic, she reasons with him 
too — but like a woman, i.e., she drowns his argu- 
ments in an extraordinary number of interjec- 
tions, with or without words. She never crosses 
the threshold of her life as an actress, she never 
once attains to the consciousness of objective 
judgment. 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 117 

When the man whom she loves is married to 
the dishonored girl, Clotilde comes to bring him 
the information which she has reserved until 
now. Suddenly she stands in the doorway, and 
sees that he is alone, and there comes over her 
an indescribable expression of dumb, suppressed 
love. She seems to be making a frantic appeal 
to the past to be as though it had never taken 
place, and in the emotion of the moment she has 
forgotten what brought her there. Not until he 
has unceremoniously shown her the door, and 
opened the old wound, does she tell him who his 
wife is. 

The same with "Odette." She is in love, and 
she receives her lover. At that moment her 
husband comes home. (Ando, Duse's partner, is 
almost as good an actor as she is.) He is a shal- 
low, restless, hot-tempered little man, who seizes 
her by the shoulders as she is about to throw her- 
self into the other man's arms. She collapses 
altogether, and stands before him stammering 
and ashamed. He thrusts her out of the house, 
although it is the middle of the night, and she is 
lightly clad. In a moment she has drawn herself 
up to her full height, — a woman deprived of home 
and child, on whom the deadliest injury has been 
inflicted in the most barbarous manner; in the 
presence of such cruelty, her own fault sinks to 
nothing, and with a voice as hoarse as that of an 
animal at bay, she cries, " Coward ! " and leaves 
him. 



n8 Six Modern Women 

Many years have gone by, and we meet Odette 
once more, this time as a courtesan in a gambling 
saloon. She is very much aged, — a thin, disil- 
lusioned woman, for whom her husband is search- 
ing everywhere, with the intention of depriving 
her of his name. There is still something about 
her which bears the impress of the injured woman. 
She recalls the past as clearly as though it hap- 
pened only yesterday; for she can never forget it, 
and time has not lessened the disgrace. She treats 
him with wearied indifference, and her voice is 
harsh like an animal's, and she chokes as though 
she were trying to smother her indignation. 

Then follows the last act, when she meets her 
daughter. She comes in, dressed like an unhappy 
old widow, shaking with emotion, and scarcely 
able to contain herself. Her eyes are aglow with 
excitement, as she rushes forward, ready to cast 
herself into her daughter's arms. But when she 
sees the fresh, innocent girl, she is overcome with 
a feeling of shyness, and shrinks from her with 
an awkward, anxious gesture. She speaks hesi- 
tatingly, like one who is ill at ease; she raises 
her shoulders and stoops, and holds her thin, 
restless hands clasped together, lest they should 
touch her daughter. The girl displays the vari- 
ous little souvenirs that belonged to her mother, 
and plays the piece which was her favorite, and 
talks about her "dead mother." Then this man 
and woman are stirred with a deep feeling, which 
is the simple keynote of humanity, which they 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 119 

never experienced before in the days when they 
were together. And they sit and cry, each buried 
in their own sorrow, and far apart from one 
another. After that she puts her trembling arms 
round the girl, and kisses her with an expression 
in her face which it is impossible to simulate, 
and which cannot be imitated, — which no one 
understands except the woman who is herself a 
mother. She gazes at her daughter as though 
she could never see enough of her; she strokes 
her with feverish hands, arranges the lace on her 
dress, and you feel the joy that it is to her to 
touch the girl, and to know that she is really 
there. Then she becomes very quiet, as though 
she had suffered all that it was possible for her to 
suffer. As she passes her husband, she catches 
hold of his outstretched hand, and tries to kiss 
it. Then she tears herself away, overcome with 
the feeling that she can endure it no longer. 

Eleonora Duse prefers difficult parts. She 
was nothing more than an ordinary actress in 
"La Locandiera," and the witty dialogue in 
" Cyprienne " and "Francillon " had little in com- 
mon with her nature. Even the part of " La 
Dame aux Camelias " was an effort to her. The 
silly, frivolous cocotte, with her consumptive 
longing to be loved, was too exaggerated a part 
for Eleonora Duse. A superabundance of good 
spirits is foreign to her nature, which is sad as 
life itself. Pride and arrogance she cannot act, 
nor yet the trustfulness which comes from inex- 



120 Six Modern Women 

perience. She gave the impression of not feel- 
ing young enough for "La Dame aux Camelias' " 
happy and unhappy moods. Eleonora Duse's art 
is most at home where life's great enigma begins: 
— Where do we come from ? Why are we here ? 
Where are we going to ? We are tossed to and 
fro on the waters in a dense fog ; we suffer wrong, 
and we do wrong, and we know not why. Fate ! 
fate! We are powerless in the hands of Fate! 
When Duse can act the blindness of fatalism, 
then she is content. 

She was able to do so in "Fedora." 
The pretty, fashionable heroine does not change 
into a fury when the man whom she loves is 
brought home murdered. When we meet her 
again she is quite quiet, — a calm, cold woman of 
the world, with only one object in life, which is 
to punish the murderer. It is a task like any 
other, but it is inevitable, and must be under- 
taken as a matter of course. She makes no dis- 
play of anger, and takes no perverse pleasure in 
thoughts of vengeance. The murderer is nothing 
to her, — he is a stranger. But she has been ren- 
dered desolate in the flower of her youth; the 
table of life, which is never spread more than 
once, has been upset before her eyes, at the very 
moment of her anticipated happiness, and this is 
an injury which she is going to repay. She is 
proud, and has no illusions; she is a just judge, 
who recompenses evil with evil and good with 
good. This " Fedora " is reserved and unreasoning. 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 121 

The scene changes. She loves the man whom 
she has been pursuing, and she discovers that the 
dead man has been false to both of them, and she 
realizes that now for the first time life's table is 
spread for her, while the secret police, to whom 
she has betrayed him, are waiting outside, and 
she clings to him terrified, showers caresses upon 
him, kisses him with unspeakable tenderness. 
There is something in her of the helplessness of 
a little child, mingled with a mother's protecting 
care, as she implores him to remain, and entices 
him to love, and seeks refuge in his love, as a 
terrified animal seeks refuge in its hole. 

There are two other features of Eleonora Duse's 
art which deserve notice. These are, the way in 
which she tells a lie, and the way she acts death. 
As I have said already, she is not a realist, and 
she frames her characters from her inner con- 
sciousness, not from details gathered from the 
outward features of life. Her representation of 
death is also the outcome of her instinct. A 
death scene has no meaning for her unless it 
reflects the inner life. As a process of physical 
dissolution, she takes no interest in it. She has 
not studied death from the side of the sick-bed, 
and she makes short work of it in "Fedora," as 
also in "La Dame aux Camelias. " In the first 
piece, the point which she emphasizes is the 
sudden determination to take the poison; in the 
second, it is her joy at having the man whom she 
loves near her at the last. 



122 Six Modern Women 

Then her manner of lying. When Duse tells 
a lie, she does it as if it were the simplest and 
most natural thing in the world. Her lies and 
deceptions are as engaging, persuasive, and fan- 
tastic as a child's. Lying is an important factor 
in the character of a woman who has much to fight 
against, and it is a weapon which she delights to 
use, and the use of it renders her unusually fas- 
cinating and affectionate. Even those who do 
not understand the words of the play, know when 
Duse is telling a lie, because she becomes so 
unusually lively and talkative, and her large eyes 
have an irresistible sparkle in them. 

" Cavalleria Rusticana" was the only good Italian 
play that Duse acted. She was more of a realist 
in this piece than in any other, because she repro- 
duced what she had seen daily before her eyes, — 
her native surroundings, her fellow-countrymen, — 
instead of that which she had learned by listening 
to her own soul. Her Santuzza — the poor, for- 
saken girl with the raw, melancholy, guttural 
accents of despair — was lifelike and convincing, 
but the barbaric wildness of the exponent was 
something which was as startling in this stupid, 
pale weakly creature as a roar from the throat of 
a roe deer. 



And now to sum up : — Eleonora Duse goes tour- 
ing all round the world. She is going to America, 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 123 

and she is certain to go back to Berlin and St. 
Petersburg and Vienna, and other places where 
she may or may not have been before. She will 
have to travel and act, travel and act, as all popular 
actresses have done before her. She will grow 
tired of it, unspeakably tired, — we can see that 
already, — but she will be obliged to go on, till 
she becomes stereotyped, like all the others. 

When we see her again, will she be the same as 
she is now? Her technical power is extraordinary, 
but her art is simple; melancholy and dignity 
are its chief ingredients. Will Duse's womanly 
nature be able to bear the strain of never-ending 
repetition? This fear has been the cause of my 
endeavor to accentuate her individuality as it 
appeared to me when I saw her. Hers is not 
one of those powerful natures which always regain 
their strength, and are able to fight through all 
difficulties. Her entire acting is tuned upon one 
note, which is usually nothing more than an 
accompaniment in the art of acting; that note 
is sincerity. In my opinion she is the greatest 
woman genius on the stage. 

Nowadays we are either too lavish or too sparing 
in our use of the word genius ; we either brandish 
it abroad with every trumpet, or else avoid it alto- 
gether. We are willing to allow that there are 
geniuses amongst actors and actresses, and that 
such have existed, and may perhaps continue to 
exist, but I have never observed that any attempt 
is made to distinguish between the genius of 



124 Six Modern W 'omen 

man and woman on the stage. This may possibly 
be accounted for by the fact that the difference 
was not great. The hero was manly, the heroine 
womanly, and the old people, whether men or 
women, were either comic or tearful, and the 
characters of both sexes were usually bad. The 
difference lay chiefly in the dress, the general 
comportment, and the voice : one could see which 
was the woman, and she of course acted a woman's 
feelings; tradition ruled, and in accordance with 
it the actress imitated the man, declaimed her 
part like him, and even went as far as to imitate 
the well-known tragic step. Types, not indi- 
viduals, were represented on the stage, and I 
have seldom seen even the greatest actresses of 
the older school deviate from this rule. 

The society pieces were supposed to represent 
everyday life; therefore it was necessary before all 
else that the actress should be a lady, and where a 
lady's feelings are limited, hers were necessarily 
limited too. To every actress, the tragedian not 
excepted, the question of chief importance was 
how she looked. 

But Duse does not care in the least how she 
looks. Her one desire is to find means of express- 
ing an emotion of the soul which overwhelms her, 
and is one of the mysteries of her womanly nature. 
Her acting is not realistic; by which I mean that 
she does not attempt to impress her audience by 
making her acting true to life, which can be easily 
attained by means of pathological phenomena, such 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 125 

as a cough, the cramp, a death struggle, etc., 
which are really the most expressive, and also, in 
a coarse way, the most successful. She will have 
none of this, because it is the kind of acting com- 
mon to both sexes. What she wants is to give 
expression to her own soul, her own womanly 
nature, the individual emotions of her own physi- 
cal and psychical being ; and she can only accom- 
plish that by being entirely herself, i.e., perfectly 
natural. That is why she makes gesticulations, 
and speaks in a tone of voice which is never used 
elsewhere upon the stage ; and she never tries to 
disguise her age, because her body is nothing 
more to her than an instrument for expressing 
her woman's soul. 

What is genius ? The word has hitherto been 
understood to imply a superabundance of intelli- 
gence, imagination, and passion, combined with 
a higher order of intellect than that possessed by 
average persons. Genius was a masculine attri- 
bute, and when people spoke of woman's genius, 
their meaning was almost identical. A finer 
spiritual susceptibility scarcely came under the 
heading of genius; it was therefore, upon the 
whole, a very unsatisfactory definition. There 
can be no doubt that there is a kind of genius 
peculiar to women, and it is when a woman is a 
genius that she is most unlike man, and most 
womanly; it is then that she creates through the 
instrumentality of her womanly nature and refined 
senses. This is the kind of productive faculty 



126 Six Modern Women 

which Eleonora Duse possesses to such a high 
degree. 

A woman's productive faculty has always shown 
a decided preference for authorship and acting, — 
the two forms of art which offer the best oppor- 
tunity for the manifestation of the inner life, as 
being the most direct and spontaneous, and in 
which there are the fewest technical difficulties 
to overcome. A woman's impulses are of such 
short duration that she feels the need for constant 
change of emotion. The majority of women are 
attracted by the stage, and there is no form of 
artistic production which they find more difficult 
to renounce. Why is this ? We will leave vanity 
and other minor considerations out of the ques- 
tion, and imagine Duse shedding real tears upon 
the stage, enduring real mental and maybe physi- 
cal sufferings, experiencing real sorrow and real 
joy. 

And now, putting aside all question of nerves 
and auto-suggestion, we would ask what it is that 
attracts a woman to the stage ? 

Sensation. 

A productive nature cannot endure the monotony 
of real life. To it, real life means uniformity. 
Uniformity in love, uniformity in work, uni- 
formity in pleasures, uniformity in sorrows. To 
break through this uniformity — this half sleep of 
daily existence — is a craving felt by all persons 
possessed of superfluous vitality. This vitality 
may be more or less centred on the ego, and for 



The Modern Woman on the Stage 127 

such, — i. e. , the persons who are posesssed of the 
largest share of individual, productive vitality, — 
authorship and acting are the two shortest ways 
of escape from the uniformity of daily life. Of 
these two, the last-named form of artistic expres- 
sion is best suited to woman, and the woman 
who has felt these sensations, especially the tragic 
ones, can never tear herself away from the stage. 
For she experiences them with an intensity of 
feeling which belongs only to the rarest moments 
in real life, and which cannot then be consciously 
enjoyed. But the artificial emotions, which can 
scarcely be reckoned artificial, since they cause 
her excited nerves to quiver, — of these she is 
strangely conscious in her enjoyment of them; 
she enjoys both spiritual and physical horror, she 
enjoys the thousand reflex emotions, and she also 
enjoys the genuine fatigue and bodily weakness 
which follow after. For the majority of women 
our life is an everlasting, half-waking expectation 
of something that never comes, or it may be noth- 
ing more than a hard day's work; but life for a 
talented actress becomes a double existence, filled 
with warm colors — sorrow and gladness. She can 
do what other women never can or would allow 
themselves to do, she can express every sensation 
that she feels, she can enjoy the full extent of a 
woman's feelings, and live them over and over 
again. But because this life is half reality and 
half fiction, and because the strain of acting is 
always followed by a feeling of emptiness and 



128 Six Modern Women 

dissatisfaction, great actresses are always disil- 
lusioned, and that is perhaps the reason why 
Duse's attractive face wears an expression of 
weariness and hopeless longing. But the warm 
colors — the colors of sorrow and passion — are 
always enticing, and that is why great tragedians 
can never forsake the stage, although gradually, 
little by little, the intensity of their feelings 
grows less, and the colors become pale and more 
false. 



IV 

The Woman Naturalist 



It is a well-known peculiarity of Norwegian 
authors that they all want something. It is 
either some of the "new devilries " with which 
Father Ibsen amuses himself in his old age, or 
else it is the Universal Disarm-ment Act and 
the peace of Europe, which Bjornson, with his 
increasing years and increasing folly, assures us 
will come to pass as a result of "universal 
morality;" or else it is the rights of the flesh, 
which have been discovered by Hans Jaeger; 
but whatever they want, it is always something 
that has no connection with their art as authors. 
All their writings assume the form of a polemical 
or critical discussion on social subjects; yet in 
spite of their boasted psychology, they care little 
for the great mystery which humanity offers to 
them in the unexplored regions lying between 
the two poles : man and woman ; and as for physi- 
ology, they are as little concerned about it as Paul 
Bourget in his Physiologie de V Amour Moderne, 
where there is no more physiology than there is 
in the novels of Dumas pere. 

"When the green tree," etc. That is the style 
of the Norwegian authors ; and as for the author- 



132 Six Modern Women 

esses of the three Scandinavian countries, -r- they 
are all ladies who have been educated in the high 
schools. They cast down their eyes, not out of 
shyness, — for the modern woman is too well aware 
of her own importance to be shy, — but in order 
to read. They read about life, as it is and as it 
should be, and then they set themselves down to 
write about life as it is and as it should be; but 
they really know nothing of it beyond the lit- 
tle that they see during their afternoon walks 
through the best streets in the town, and at the 
evening parties given by the best bourgeois 
society. 

This is the case with all Scandinavian author- 
esses, with one exception. This one exception 
can see, and she looks at life with good large 
eyes, opened wide like a child's, and sees with 
the impartiality that belongs to a healthy nature; 
she can grasp what she sees, and describe it too, 
with a freshness and expressiveness which betray 
a lack of "cultured" reading. 



II 

A lady of remarkable and brilliant beauty may 
sometimes be seen in the theatre at Copenhagen, 
or walking in the streets by the side of a tall, 
stout, fair gentleman, whose features resemble 
those of Gustavus Adolphus. Any one can see 
that the lady is a native of Bergen. To us 



The Woman Naturalist 133 

strangers, the natives of Bergen have a certain 
something whereby we always recognize them, 
no matter whether we meet them in Paris or in 
Copenhagen. Bjornson's wife has it as decidedly 
as the humblest clerk whom we see on Sundays 
at the table of his employer at Reval or Riga. 
Their short, straight noses lack earnestness, their 
hair is shiny and untidy, their eyes are black as 
pitch, and they have the free and easy movements 
that are peculiar to a well-proportioned body; it 
is as though the essence of the vitality of Europe 
had collected in the old Hanseatic town of the 
North. I do not think that the inhabitants of 
Bergen are remarkable for their superior intelli- 
gence; if they were it might hinder them from 
grasping things as resolutely, and despatching 
them as promptly as they are in the habit of 
doing. But among Norwegians, who are known 
to have heavy, meditative natures, the people of 
Bergen are the most cheerful and light-hearted, 
— in as far as it is possible to be cheerful and 
light-hearted in this world. 

The lady who is walking by the side of the man 
with the Gustavus-Adolphus head is a striking 
phenomenon in Copenhagen. She is different 
from every one else, which a lady ought never to 
be. Compared with the flat-breasted, lively, and 
flirtatious women of Copenhagen, she, with her 
well-developed figure and large hips, is like a 
great sailing-ship among small coquettish pleas- 
ure boats. She is always doing something which 



134 Six Modern Women 

no lady would do; she wears bright colors, which 
are not the fashion ; and I saw her one evening at 
an entertainment, where there were not enough 
chairs, sitting on a table and dangling her feet, 
— although she is the mother of two grown-up 
sons ! 



Ill 

When the woman's rights movement made its 
appearance in Norway, authoresses sprang up as 
numerous as mushrooms after the rain. Women 
claimed the right to study, to plead, and to legis- 
late in the local body and the state ; they claimed 
the suffrage, the right of property, and the right 
to earn their own living; but there was one very 
simple right to which they laid no claim, and 
that was the woman's right to love. To a great 
extent this right had been thrust aside by the 
modern social order, yet there were plenty of 
Scandinavian authors who claimed it; it was only 
amongst the lady writers that it was ignored. 
They did not want to risk anything in the com- 
pany of man ; they did not want any love on the 
fourth story with self-cooked meals; they pre- 
ferred to criticise man and all connected with 
him; and they wrote books about the hard-work- 
ing woman and the more or less contemptible 
man. The two sexes were a vanquished stand- 
point. These were completed by the addition of 



The Woman Naturalist 135 

beings who were neither men nor women, and, in 
consequence of the law of adaptability, they con- 
tinued to improve with time, and woman became 
a thinking, working, neutral organism. 

Good heavens ! When women think ! 

Among the group of celebrated women-thinkers, 

— Leffler, Ahlgren, Agrell, etc., — who criticised 
love as though it were a product of the intelli- 
gence, followed by a crowd of maidenly amazons, 
there suddenly appeared an author named Amalie 
Skram, whom one really could not accuse of 
being too thoughtful. It is true that in her first 
book there was the intellectual woman and the 
sensual man, and a seduced servant girl, grouped 
upon the chessboard of moral discussion with a 
measured proportion of light and shade, — that 
was the usual method of treating the deepest and 
most complicated moments of human life. But 
this book contained something else, which no 
Scandinavian authoress had ever produced before : 
her characters came and went, each in his own 
way; every one spoke his own language and had his 
own thoughts ; there was no need for inky fingers 
to point the way; life lived itself, and the hori- 
zon was wide with plenty of fresh air and blue sky, 

— there was nothing cramped about it, like the 
wretched little extract of life to which the other 
ladies confined themselves. There was a wealth 
of minute observation about this book, brought to 
life by careful painting and critical descriptions, 
a trustworthy memory and an untroubled honesty; 



136 Six Modern Women 

one recognized true naturalism below the hard 
surface of a problem novel, and one felt that if 
her talent grew upon the sunny side, the North 
would gain its first woman naturalist who did not 
write about life in a critical, moralizing, and 
polemical manner, but in whom life would reveal 
itself as bad and as stupid, as full of unnecessary 
anxiety and unconscious cruelty, as easy-going, 
as much frittered away and led by the senses as 
it actually is. 

Two years passed by and "Constance Ring," 
the story of a woman who was misunderstood, 
was followed by " Sjur Gabriel," the story of a 
starving west coast fisherman. There is not a 
single false note in the book, and not one awk- 
ward description or superfluous word. It re- 
sembles one of those sharp-cut bronze medallions 
of the Renaissance, wherein the intention of the 
artist is executed with a perfected technical power 
in the use of the material. This perfection was 
the result of an intimate knowledge of the mate- 
rial, and that was Fru Skram's secret. Her soul 
was sufficiently uncultured, and her sense of har- 
mony spontaneous enough to enable her to repro- 
duce the simplest cause in the heart's fibre. She 
describes human beings as they are to be found 
alone with nature, — with a raw, niggardly, unre- 
liable, Northern nature; she tells of their never- 
ending, unfruitful toil, whether field labor or 
child-bearing, the stimulating effect of brandy, 
the enervating influence of their fear of a harsh 



The Woman Naturalist 137 

God, — the God of a severe climate, — the shy, 
unspoken love of the father, and the overworked 
woman who grows to resemble an animal more 
and more. Such are the contents of this simplest 
of all books, which is so intense in its absolute 
straightforwardness. The story is told in the 
severest style, in few words without reflections, 
but with a real honesty which looks facts straight 
in the face with unterrified gaze, and is filled 
with a knowledge of life and of people combined 
with a breadth of experience which is generally 
the property of men, and not many men. We 
are forced to ask ourselves where a woman can 
have obtained such knowledge, and we wonder 
how this unconventional mode of thinking can 
have found its way into the tight-laced body and 
soul of a woman. 

A second book appeared the same year, called 
"Two Friends." It is the story of a sailing ves- 
sel of the same name, which travels backwards 
and forwards between Bergen and Jamaica, and 
Sjur Gabriel's grandson is the cabin boy on 
board. This book offers such a truthful repre- 
sentation of the life, tone of conversation, and 
work on board a Norwegian sailing vessel, that 
it would do credit to an old sea captain. The 
tone is true, the characters are life-like, and the 
humor which pervades the whole is thoroughly 
seamanlike. The description of how the entire 
crew, including the captain, land at Kingston 
one hot summer night to sacrifice to the Black 



138 Six Modern W 'omen 

Venus, and the description of the storm, and the 
shipwreck of the "Two Friends" on the Atlantic 
Ocean, the gradual destruction of the ship, the 
state of mind of the crew, and the captain's sud- 
denly awakened piety; — it is all so perfectly life- 
like, so characteristically true of the sailor class, 
and so full of local Norwegian coloring, that we 
ask ourselves how a woman ever came to write 
it, — not only to experience it, but to describe it 
at all, describe as she does with such masterly 
confidence and such plain expressions, without 
any affectation, prudery, or conceit, and without 
any trace of that dilettantism of style and sub- 
ject which has hitherto been regarded as in- 
separable from the writings of Scandinavian 
women. 

IV 

Whence comes this sudden change from the 
dilettante book, "Constance Ring," with its 
Bjornson-like reflections, to the matured style of 
" Sjur Gabriel " and " Two Friends " ? 

I could not understand it all at first, but the 
day came when I understood. Amalie Skram as 
a woman and an author had come on to the sunny 
side. 

I have often wondered why it is that so few 
people come on to the sunny side. I have studied 
life until I became the avowed enemy of all 
superficial pessimism and superficial naturalism. 



The Woman Naturalist 139 

I have discovered a secret attraction between hap- 
piness and individualism, — an attraction deeper 
than Zola is able to apprehend; it is the complete 
human beings who, with wide-opened tentacles, 
are able to appropriate to their own use every- 
thing that their inmost being has need of; but 
whether a person is or is not a complete human 
being, that fate decides for them before they are 
born. 

Fru Amalie Skram was, in her way, one of 
these complete women. She passed unscathed 
through a girl's education, was perhaps scarcely 
influenced by it, and with sparkling eyes and 
glowing cheeks she gazed upon the world and 
society with the look of a barbaric Northern 
woman, who retains the full use of her instinct. 
When quite young she married the captain of a 
ship, by whom she had two sons. She went with 
him on a long sea voyage round the world ; she 
saw the Black Sea, the Sea of Azof, and the 
shores of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. She 
saw life on board ship, and life on land, — man's 
life. Her mind was like a photographic plate that 
preserves the impressions received until they are 
needed; and when she reproduced them, they 
were as fresh and complete as at the moment 
when they were first taken. These impressions 
were not the smallware of a lady's drawing-room; 
they represented the wide horizon, the rough 
ocean of life with its many dangers. It was the 
kind of life that brings with it freedom from all 



140 Six Modern Women 

prejudice, the kind of life which is no longer 
found on board a modern steamer going to and 
fro between certain places at certain intervals. 

But it was not to be expected that the monotony 
of the life could satisfy her. She separated her- 
self from her husband, and remained on shore, 
where she became interested in various social 
problems, and wrote "Constance Ring." 

It was then that she made the acquaintance of 
Erik Skram. 

The man with the head of Gustavus Adolphus 
is Denmark's most Danish critic. His name is 
little known elsewhere, and he cannot be said to 
have a very great reputation; but this may be 
partly accounted for by the fact that he has no 
ambition, and partly because he has one of those 
profound natures that are rendered passive by the 
depth of their intellect. He is a man of one 
book, a novel called " Gertrude Colbjornson, " and 
he is never likely to write another. But he con- 
tributes to newspapers and periodicals, where his 
spontaneous talent is accompanied by that quiet, 
delicate, easy-going style which is one of the 
forms of expression peculiar to the Danish 
sceptics. 

FruAmalie Miiller became Fru Amalie Skram, 
and the bold Bergen woman, who was likewise the 
dissatisfied lady reformer of Christiania, became 
the wife of a born critic, and went to live at 
Copenhagen. She was an excitable little bru- 
nette, he a fair, phlegmatic man, and together 



The Woman Naturalist 141 

they entered upon the struggle for the mastery, 
which marriage always is. 

In this struggle Fru Amalie Skram was beaten; 
every year she became more of an artist, more 
natural, more simple, more herself, and more of 
all that a woman never can become when she is 
left to herself. Her husband's superior culture 
liberated her fresh, wild, primitive nature from 
the parasites of social problems; the experienced 
critic saw that her strength lay in her keen obser- 
vation, her happy incapacity for reasoning and 
moralizing, her infallible memory for the impres- 
sions of the senses and emotions, and her good 
spirits, which are nothing more than the result 
of physical health. He cautiously pushed her 
into the direction to which she is best suited, 
to the naturalism which is natural to her. Her 
books were no longer drawn out, neither were 
they as poor in substance as books by women 
generally are, even the best of them ; they grew 
to be more laconic than the majority of men's 
books, but clear and vivid ; there was nothing in 
them to betray the woman. And after he had 
done this much for her, the experienced man did 
yet one thing more, — he gave her the courage of 
her recollections. 



142 Six Modern Women 



V 



Amalie Skram's talent culminated in "Lucie." 
In this book we see her going about in an untidy, 
dirty, ill-fitting morning gown, and she is per- 
fectly at home. It would scandalize any lady. 
Authoresses who struggle fearlessly after honest 
realism — like Frau von Ebner-Eschenbach and 
George Eliot — might perhaps have touched upon 
it, but with very little real knowledge of the 
subject. Amalie Skram, on the other hand, is 
perfectly at home in this dangerous borderland. 
She is much better informed than Heinz Tovote, 
for instance, and he is a poet who sings of 
women who are not to be met with in drawing- 
rooms. She describes the pretty ballet girl with 
genuine enjoyment and true sympathy; but the 
book falls into two halves, one of which has suc- 
ceeded and the other failed. Everything that 
concerns Lucie is a success, including the part 
about the fine, rather weak-kneed gentleman who 
supports her, and ends by marrying her, although 
his love is not of the kind that can be called 
"ennobling." All that does not concern Lucie 
and her natural surroundings is a failure, espe- 
cially the fine gentleman's social circle, into 
which Lucie enters after her marriage, and where 
she seems to be as little at home as Amalie 
Skram herself. Many an author and epicurean 
would have hesitated before writing such a book 



The Woman Naturalist 143 

as "Lucie." But Amalie Skram's naturalism is 
of such an honest and happy nature that any 
secondary considerations would not be likely to 
enter her mind, and in the last chapter the brutal 
naturalism of the story reaches its highest pitch. 
In the whole of Europe there are only two gen- 
uine and honest naturalists, and they are Emile 
Zola and Amalie Skram. 

Her later books — take, for instance, her great 
Bergen novel, "S. G. Myre," " Love in North 
and South," "Betrayed," etc. — are not to be 
compared with the three that we have mentioned. 
They are naturalistic, of course; their naturalism 
is of the best kind ; they are still unco in de la 
nature, but they are no longer entirely vu a 
travers un temperament. They are no longer quite 
Amalie Skram. 

Norwegian naturalism — we might almost say 
Teutonic naturalism — culminated in Amalie 
Skram, this off-shoot of the Gallic race. Com- 
pared with her, Fru Leffler and Fru Ahlgren are 
good little girls, in their best Sunday pinafores; 
Frau von Ebner is a maiden aunt, and George 
Eliot a moralizing old maid. AH these women 
came of what is called "good family," and had 
been trained from their earliest infancy to live 
as became their position. All the other women 
whom I have sketched in this book belonged to 
the upper classes, and like all women of their 
class, they only saw one little side of life, and 
therefore their contribution to literature is worth- 



144 Six Modern Women 

less as long as it tries to be objective. Natu- 
ralism is the form of artistic expression best suited 
to the lower classes, and to persons of primitive 
culture, who do not feel strong enough to elim- 
inate the outside world, but reflect it as water 
reflects an image. They feel themselves in sym- 
pathy with their surroundings, but they have not 
the refined instincts and awakened antipathies 
which belong to isolation. Where the character 
differs from the individual consciousness, they do 
not think of sacrificing their soul as a highway 
for the multitude, any more than their body — 
a la Lucie — to the commune bonum. 



V 
A Young Girl's Tragedy 



It seldom happens that a genuine confession pen- 
etrates through the intense loneliness in which a 
person's inner life is lived; with women, hardly 
ever. It is rare when a woman leaves any written 
record of her life at all, and still more rare when 
her record is of any psychological interest; it is 
generally better calculated to lead one astray. 
A woman is not like a man, who writes about 
himself from a desire to understand himself. 
Even celebrated women, who are scarce, and 
candid women, who are perhaps scarcer still, 
have no particular desire to understand them- 
selves. In fact, I have never known a woman 
who did not wish, either from a good or bad 
motive, to remain a terra incognita to her own 
self, if only to preserve the instinctive element 
in her actions, which might otherwise have 
perished. There is also another reason for this 
reticence. A woman does not live the inner life 
to anything like the same extent as a man; her 
instincts, occupations, needs, and interests lie 
outside herself; whereas a man is more self-con- 
tained, — his entire being is developed from within. 
Woman is spiritually and mentally an empty ves- 



148 Six Modern Women 

sel, which must be replenished by man. She 
knows nothing about herself, or about man, or 
about the great silent inflexibility of life, until 
it is revealed to her consciousness by man. But 
the woman of our time — and many of the best 
women, too — manifests a desire to dispense with 
man altogether; and she whom Nature has des- 
tined to be a vessel out of which substance shall 
grow, wishes to be a substance in herself, out of 
which nothing can grow, because the substance 
wherewith she endeavors to fill the void is un- 
organical, rational, and foreign to her nature. 
The mistake is tragic, but there is nothing im- 
pressive about it; it is merely hopeless, chaotic, 
heart-rending; and because it is chaotic in itself, 
it creates a void for the woman who falls into 
it, — a void in which she perishes. The more 
talented she is, and the more womanly, the 
worse it will be for her. And yet it is gen- 
erally the talented woman who is most strongly 
attracted by it, and man remains to her both 
inwardly and outwardly as much a stranger as 
though he were a being from another planet. 
What can be the origin of this devastating prin- 
ciple at the core of woman's being? Among all 
the learned and celebrated women whom I have 
attempted to depict in this book, there is not 
one in whom it has not shown itself, either in a 
lasting or spasmodic form ; but neither is there 
one who did not suffer acutely on account of it. 
How did it begin in these women, who were so 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 149 

richly endowed, whose natures were so produc- 
tive? Was it developed by means of outward 
suggestion? Or does it mark a state of transi- 
tion between old and new? It is possible that 
it is not found only amongst women, but that 
there is something corresponding to it in men. 
I shall return to this subject afterwards. 

Of all the books which women have written 
about themselves, I only know of two that are 
written with the unalloyed freshness of spon- 
taneity, and which are therefore genuine to a 
degree that would be otherwise impossible; these 
are Mrs. Carlyle's diary and Marie BashkirtsefFs 
journal. The contents of both books consist 
chiefly of the cries of despair which issue from 
the mouths of two women who feel themselves 
captured and ill-used, and are consequently tired 
of life, though they do not know the reason nor 
who is to blame. Mrs. Carlyle was an imbittered 
woman, unwilling to complain of, yet always in- 
directly abusing, that disagreeable oddity, Thomas 
Carlyle; he was an egotistical boor, who required 
everything and gave nothing in return, and was 
certainly not the right husband for her. The 
two books stand side by side : one is the writ- 
ing of a discontented woman of a much older 
generation, whose long-suppressed wrath, annoy- 
ance, and indignation, combined with bodily and 
spiritual thirst, resulted in a nervous disease; 
while the other is far more extraordinary and 
difficult to comprehend, as it is the writing of a 



150 Six Modern Women 

young girl who is rich, talented, and pretty, and 
who belongs entirely to the present generation of 
women, since she would be only thirty-four years 
of age were she living now. Both books are 
confessions d'ontre tombe, and they are both the 
result of a desire to be silent, — a desire not 
often felt by women. 

Mrs. Carlyle maintained this silence all her 
life long towards her husband, and it was not 
until after her death that he discovered, by means 
of the diary, how little he had succeeded in mak- 
ing her happy; his surprise was great. Marie 
Bashkirtseff also maintained silence towards an 
all too affectionate family, consisting of women 
only. They both possessed a strength of mind 
which is rare in women, and it was owing to this 
that they did not confide their troubles to any 
one; theirs was the pride that belongs to soli- 
tude, for they had neither women friends nor con- 
fidants, and it was only when they were no 
longer able to contain themselves that some of 
their best and worst feelings overflowed into these 
books, — in Mrs. Carlyle's case in a few bitter- 
sweet drops, but with Marie Bashkirtseff they 
were more like a foaming torrent filled with thun- 
dering whirlpools, with here and there a few quiet 
places where the stream widens out into a beauti- 
ful clear lake, and thin willows bend over the still 
waters. The one felt that she had not developed 
into a full-grown woman by her marriage; the 
other was a young girl who never grew to be a 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 151 

woman ; but both are less interesting on account 
of what they tell us than on account of that 
which they have not known how to tell. Marie 
Bashkirtseffs book, which in the course of ten 
years has run through almost as many editions, 
is especially interesting in the latter respect, and 
is a perfect gold mine for all that has to do with 
the psychology of young girls. 



II 

Marie Bashkirtseff was descended from one 
of those well-guarded sections of society from 
whence nearly all the women have sprung who 
have taken any active part in the movements of 
their time during the latter half of our century. 
Hers was more than ordinarily happily situated. 
The two families from whose union she sprang, the 
Bashkirtseffs and Babanins, were both branches of 
old South Russian nobility; but for some reason 
or other, which she appears never to have ascer- 
tained, the marriage between her parents was an 
unhappy one. They separated after having been 
married for a couple of years, during which time 
two children, a son and a daughter, were born, 
and her mother returned to her old home, accom- 
panied by little Marie. Petted and spoiled by 
her grandparents, her mother, her aunt, and the 
governesses, who, even at that early age, were 
greatly impressed by her numerous talents and 



152 Six Modern Women 

determined will, she spent the first years of her 
life on her grandparents' property; but in May, 
1870, the whole family went abroad, including the 
mother, aunt, grandfather, Marie, her brother, her 
little cousin, a family doctor, and a large retinue 
of servants. 

For two years they wandered from place to 
place, staying at Vienna, Baden-Baden, Geneva, 
and Paris, and finally settling at Nice. It was 
there that Marie, who was then twelve years of 
age, began the journal, published after her death 
at four-and-twenty, which was to be her real life 
work. 

She has bequeathed other tokens of her labor 
to posterity. They hang in the Luxembourg 
museum, in the division reserved for pictures by 
artists of the present day which have been pur- 
chased by the State. If we go into one of the 
smaller side rooms, we are suddenly confronted 
by a picture of dogs barking in a desert place; 
there is something so real and vivid about it that 
the rest of the State-rewarded industry seems pale 
and lifeless in comparison. A bit of nature in 
the corner attracts, while it makes us shiver; it 
is large, bold, brutal, — and what does it repre- 
sent ? Only a couple of street urchins talking to 
each other as they stand in front of a wooden 
paling. There is no doubt but that the influence 
of Bastien Lepage has been at work here. There 
is something that reminds us of him in the hot, 
gray, sunless sky; but there is also a certain 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 153 

Russian atmosphere about it that gives a dry look 
that contrasts strangely with the French land- 
scapes. And where would Bastien Lepage get 
these contours? We have never seen lines more 
carelessly drawn, and yet so true; there is real 
genius in them. This picture is a primitive bit 
of Russian nature, child-like in its honesty, and 
the painter is Marie Bashkirtseff. 

Near the door hangs a little portrait of a young 
woman dressed in fur. She has the typical Rus- 
sian face, with thick, irregular eyebrows, from 
under which a pair of Tartar eyes look at you 
straight in the face with a curious expression. 
What can it be? Is it indifference, or defiance; 
or is it nothing more than physical well-being? 

Among all the pictures painted by women that 
I have ever seen, I do not remember any where 
the temperament and individuality of the artist 
are revealed with greater force. The touch is so 
primitive, so uncultured in the best and worst 
sense of the word, that it surprises us to think 
that it is the work of a woman, half child, who 
belongs to the best society; it would seem rather 
to suggest the claws of a lioness. 

Yet Marie Bashkirtseff was a thorough lady, 
not only by birth and education, but in her heart 
as well ; she was a lady to the tips of her fingers, 
to an extreme that was almost absurd; she was 
not merely a fashionable lady, in the way that 
certain clever young men take a half ironical 
pleasure in appearing fashionable, but a lady in 



^ 



154 Six Modern Women 

real earnest, with all the intensity of a religious 
bigot. 

She had been educated by ladies, by a gentle 
and refined though rather shallow mother, by an 
aunt whose vocation seems to have consisted in 
self-sacrifice for others, a domineering grand- 
mother, two governesses, — one Russian and the 
other French, — and an "angelical" doctor who 
lived in the house, and always travelled with 
them, and who seems to have become somewhat 
of a woman himself from having lived amongst so 
many women. 

She was no more than twelve years old when 
she discovered that her governesses were insup- 
portably stupid, and that the only thing that 
they understood was how to make her waste her 
precious youth. There was no time for that. 
She was already aware of the shortness of time, 
and it was her anxiety to make the most of it that 
afterwards hurried her short life to its close. She 
was possessed of an intense thirst for everything, 
— life, knowledge, enjoyment, sympathy. But 
although her grandfather had been " Byronic " in 
his youth, the family passed their lives vegetat- 
ing with true Russian indolence; there was no 
help for it; she knew that nothing better was 
to be expected of them. And accordingly she 
hunted her governesses out of the house and took 
her education into her own hands. A tutor was 
engaged, and a list was made from which no 
branch of learning was excluded. The tutor 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 155 

nearly fainted with astonishment when it was 
shown to him, but he was still more astonished 
at Marie's progress afterwards. Drawing was 
the only lesson in which the future great artist 
did not succeed; it bored her, and nothing came 
of it. 

Her inner life, meanwhile, is stirred with 
tumultuous passions. She is in love, as pas- 
sionately and as truly in love as any matured 
woman. And, after all, this thirteen-year-old 
girl is a matured woman ; she is more developed, 
more truly woman-like than the worn-out woman 
of three-and-twenty, who only lived with half her 
strength. The man whom she loves is a very dis- 
tinguished Englishman, who had bought a villa 
at Nice, where he spent a few months with his 
mistress every year, — but this circumstance does 
not affect Marie in the very least ; she is expe- 
rienced in her knowledge of the world, and by no 
means bourgeois in her way of thinking. There 
is another reason, however, that causes her intol- 
erable suffering, — the handsome English duke 
is too grand for her. She is troubled, not only 
because he pays her no attention at present, but 
because she thinks that he is never likely to 
esteem her sufficiently to wish to marry her, 
unless, indeed, she could do something to make 
herself a name, and become celebrated. Marie 
Bashkirtseff, accordingly, wishes to become cele- 
brated. She would like to be a great singer, who 
is at the same time a great actress; she would 



156 Six Modern W 'omen 

like to have the whole world at her feet, includ- 
ing the duke, and be able to choose between royal 
dukes and princes, and then she would choose 
him. For a couple of years or more she lives 
upon this dream, studies, reads, cries, and suffers 
that unnecessary overplus of secret pain and 
anxiety which usually accompanies the develop- 
ment of richly gifted natures. 

She has a lovely voice and great dramatic 
talent, but the former is not fully developed, and 
cannot be trained for some years to come. She 
buys cart-loads of books ; but as there is no one 
to guide her choice, and her social intercourse 
does not diverge a hairbreadth outside her family 
and a small circle of friends, consisting chiefly 
of compatriots, it is only natural that her reading 
should be confined to Dumas/^, Balzac, Octave 
Feuillet, and such literary tallow candles as 
Ohnet, and others like him. Her taste remains 
uncultivated, her horizon bounded by the family, 
and her knowledge continues to be a mixture of 
ancient superstitions combined with the newest 
shibboleths. 

Her most familiar converse is between herself 
and her Creator, whom her imagination pictures 
as a kind of superior great-grandfather, very grand 
and powerful, and the only One in whom she can 
confide. To Him she lays bare her heart, be- 
seeching Him to give her that which is a neces- 
sity of life to her, and she makes numerous 
promises, to be fulfilled only on condition that 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 157 

her prayers are granted; she respects what she 
conceives to be His wishes with regard to prayer 
and almsgiving, and overwhelms Him with re- 
proaches if these are of no avail. And they are 
of no avail. Her voice, which has been tried 
and praised by the highest musical authorities in 
Paris, is being gradually undermined by a disease 
of the throat, and the duke marries; thus her 
hopes of becoming famous and of gaining a great 
love are gone, gone forever. 

Those were the first and second cruel wounds 
wherewith life made its presence felt in this sen- 
sitive soul ; they were wounds which never healed, 
and which imparted hidden veins of venom to the 
healthy parts of her being. 

Does not this remind us of the fairy tale about 
wounds that never heal? Is not this just the 
way that the wounds made by Fate, or by human 
beings, in our souls continue to bleed forever? 
They are like tender places, which shrink from 
the touch throughout a lifetime, and wither if a 
breath passes over them. The more sensitive a 
person is, the more painful they are, and nothing 
is so easily wounded as a growing organism. 
The nerves have a good memory, better even 
than the brain, and there are some wounds re- 
ceived in youth and impressed during growth 
which seem to have been wiped out ages ago, till 
suddenly they present the appearance of a putre- 
fying spot, a poisonous place, the point of disin- 
tegration of the entire organism. Or there may 



158 Six Modern Women 

be something crippled in the person's vitality. 
They live on, but one muscle, perhaps only a 
very small one, is strained and just a little out 
of order, and the soul is compelled to replace 
what the body lacks by means of extra exer- 
tion, which is afterwards paid for by excessive 
weariness. 

There are some sluggish natures, especially 
among women, who exert their strength to the 
least possible degree, and do their work in a 
half-hearted manner. There are also souls which 
seem all aglow with the psychic and sensuous 
warmth of their natures, who carry the whole 
substance of their being in the hand, and who 
give themselves up entirely to the interest of 
what they are feeling and wishing for at the 
moment. Their path is strewn with fragments 
of their life, which fall off dead, and every stroke 
aimed at them hits the heart. Their soul has no 
covering to protect them from disappointment; 
neither have they the forgetful sleep of animals, 
wherein the body is at rest. But such natures 
are generally possessed of an endless supply of 
self-sustaining strength, which imbues them with 
the power to grow again; and although their 
wounds are plentiful, their germinating cells are 
plenteous also. The parts that are crippled 
remain crippled still, but new possibilities are 
continually developing in new directions. 

The young girl of whose silly, half-fancied 
love story I have made so much, was one of these 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 159 

natures. She was formed of the material out of 
which destiny either moulds women who become 
the greatest of their sex, or else casts them aside, 
discarded and broken. It generally depends upon 
some very trifling matter which of the two takes 
place. Marie was an exceedingly spoiled child 
when the first blow fell; but there was something 
lacking in her nature — a dead spot that revealed 
itself with the destruction of her voice — while 
her body was blossoming into womanhood. There 
was a dead spot somewhere without as well, some- 
thing that lacked in life, else it were not possible 
to long so ardently and not obtain. There was 
something that gazed at her with evil, ghost-like 
eyes, causing her nerves to quiver beneath its 
icy breath. She was a brave girl. She did not 
complain, did not look back, but drew herself 
together, silent and determined. Her passionate 
love of work took the form of painting, and as 
she could not become a great singer, she meant 
to be a great painter. But a part of her being 
congealed and withered away; her young heart 
had expanded to receive a return of the love it 
had so freely given, and was left unsatisfied. 

The years passed in much the same way as they 
had passed before for this spoiled child of for- 
tune. A few people who were indifferent to her 
died, and others came who were no less indif- 
ferent. They travelled from Nice to Paris, and 
from Paris to Nice, but she was equally lonely 
everywhere. She had no playfellows, no girl 



160 Six Modern Women 

friends, no school-room companions, and to life's 
contrasts she remained a stranger. Her cousin 
Dina was the only one who was always with her, 
and she was the typical girl, — a pretty, good- 
natured nonentity. And thus, though always 
lonely, she was never alone. Wherever she 
went, her mother and aunt went with her, and 
wherever they did not go, Marie Bashkirtseff did 
not go either. In all her journeyings, she never 
received a single impression for herself alone; it 
was always reflected at the same moment in the 
sun-glasses of her aunt and mother, and never a 
word did she hear but was also heard by her 
duennas. No man was allowed within the circle 
of her acquaintance until he had first been judged 
suitable from a marriageable, as well as a social 
point of view. The female atmosphere by which 
she was surrounded paralyzed every other. 

It was her destiny! 

Life was empty around her, and in the void 
her excited nerves became even more and more 
centred upon her own ego. Her opinion of her- 
self assumed gigantic proportions, and whatever 
there had been of soul grandeur in her nature 
was changed into admiration of self. And yet, 
in spite of all, this girl, who was undoubtedly a 
genius, never realized her own power to the full. 
The natural nobility of her feelings assumed a 
moral, bourgeois dress, and her young senses, 
which had manifested such a passionate craving 
at their first awakening, withered and grew numb. 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 161 

She was sixteen when she experienced her 
second disappointment in love, and it became 
for her the turning-point of her inner life. 

At her earnest request the family had gone to 
Rome. It was the time of the Carnival, and 
after the conventional life at Nice, the sudden 
outbreak of merriment in the Eternal City called 
forth a frivolous mood in every one. There was 
something delightful in the ease with which ac- 
quaintances were made, and the simple, straight- 
forward manner in which homage was done. A 
young man makes love to Dina; he belongs to 
an old, aristocratic, Roman family, and is the 
nephew of an influential cardinal. Marie entices 
him away from her, and the young Italian falls a 
prey to the brilliant fascination and wild coquetry 
of her manner. He is dazzled by such aggres- 
sive conduct on the part of so young a girl, and 
the equivocal character of it spurs him on. He 
storms her with declarations of love, and Marie 
reciprocates his passion, — not very seriously 
perhaps, but her senses, her vanity, her pride, all 
are on fire. The young man communicates to 
her something of his habitual good spirits, and 
her head, no less than the heads of her mother 
and aunt, is completely turned at the prospect of 
such a distinguished parti. The family set to 
work in good earnest to bring matters to a climax, 
for which object they employ suitable deputies, 
while Marie persistently holds the legitimate 
joys of marriage before the face of her importu- 



1 62 Six Modern Women 

nate lover. The Italian slips past these danger- 
ous rocks with the dexterity of an eel. He knows 
what Marie and the house of Bashkirtseff, con- 
vinced as they are of the grandeur of their Rus- 
sian ancestry, cannot realize, — that for him, the 
heir and nephew of the cardinal, no marriage will 
be considered suitable unless it brings with it 
connection with the nobility, or the advantages 
of an immense fortune; and in this opinion he 
fully concurs. The result is that they are always 
at cross purposes : he talks of love, she of mar- 
riage; he of tete-a-tites on the staircase after mid- 
night, she of betrothal kisses between lunch and 
dinner under the auspices of her family. When 
his allusions to his uncle's disapproval of a mar- 
riage with a heretical Russian lady from the 
provinces do not produce any effect on the 
family other than indignation, expressive of their 
wounded feelings, he goes away, and allows him- 
self to be sent into retreat in a monastery. 
While there, he ascertains that the Bashkirtseffs 
have left Rome and given up all desire to have 
such a vacillating creature for a son-in-law. They 
go to Nice, and no more is said about him until 
Marie persuades her family to return to Rome, 
where she meets him at a party, but only to dis- 
cover that he loves her when there, and forgets 
her again the moment that she is out of sight. 
This was the second time that she had knocked at 
the door of life; and, as on the former occasion, 
Fate held back the joys which she seemed to have 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 163 

in store, only opening the door wide enough to 
let in the face of a grinning Punchinello. 

Few writers have attempted to describe the 
state of a young girl's mind on such occasions, 
when a thousand cherished hopes are instantane- 
ously charred as though struck by lightning, and, 
worse still, all that she had wished for becomes 
hateful in her eyes, and the shame of it assumes a 
gigantic scale, and continues to increase, though 
maybe at the cost of her life. Men have no sus- 
picion of this, and they would find it hard to 
understand, even supposing that they were given 
the opportunity of observing it. They grow up 
amid the realities of life; a girl, in the unreal. 
The disappointments which a man endures are 
real ones, and unless he is a fool, he is in a 
position to form an approximate valuation of his 
own importance. With a girl it is different; her 
opinion of herself is exaggerated to an extent 
that is quite fantastical and altogether unreal, 
and this is especially the case when her educa- 
tion is of a strictly conventional character, and 
has been conducted mainly by women. The 
preservation of her purity is the foundation of 
her creed, but she is not told, nor does she guess, 
wherein this purity consists, nor how it may be 
lost; and consequently she imagines that it can 
be lost in every conceivable way, — by a mere 
nothing, by a pressure of the hand, but in any 
case by a kiss. This kiss Marie Bashkirtseff 
had actually given and received, and after it she 



1 64 Six Modern Women 

had been forgotten and despised ! That kiss 
branded her in secret all her life. She never 
forgot it. 

This is not the only consequence of the change 
from the real to the unreal which takes place 
when the outer world casts its reflection in the 
mirror of a young girl's soul. Every girl has an 
exaggerated idea of the value of the mystic purity 
of her maidenhood in the eyes of men ; and when 
she makes a man happy by the gift of herself, 
she imagines that she has given him something 
extraordinary, which he must accept on bended 
knee. What words can describe the humiliation 
which she feels if he does not set a sufficiently 
high value on the gift, or if he thrusts it aside 
like a pair of old slippers that do not fit ! All 
girls are silly to a certain extent, even the 
cleverest; and the girl who is not silly on this 
point must have lost something of her girlish 
modesty. 

In the case of Marie Bashkirtseff, a part of her 
being was blighted after her encounter with the 
Italian, and she never entirely recovered from the 
effects of it. This, her first acquaintance with a 
man, was so full of racial misunderstandings and 
others besides, that it destroyed her faith in man, 
as indeed it is doomed to be destroyed sooner 
or later in every girl with a strong individuality 
and healthy nature. And for her, as for many 
another, followed the lifeless years into the 
middle of the twenties, when a new and very 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 165 

different faith begins to show itself as the result 
of wider views of life and internal changes. But 
with her this faith never came. Her vitality- 
gave way too soon. Those dead years which 
must inevitably follow upon an all too promising 
and too early maturity, leaving a young woman 
apparently trivial and devoid of any true individ- 
uality of character, and which often last until the 
thirties, when the time comes for a new and 
greater change, — those years with Marie, as with 
many another "struggling" girl, were filled with 
an unnatural craving for work. 

She wanted to be something on her own 
account, as an individual. She compelled her 
mother and aunt to go with her to Paris, where 
she could go to Julian's studio, which was the 
only one for women where painting was taught 
seriously. The working hours were from eight 
to twelve, from one to five. 

But she worked longer. This spoiled child, 
who had never known what it meant to exert her- 
self, was not satisfied with eight hours of hard 
labor. She works in the evenings as well, after 
she comes home; she works on Sundays; she is 
dead to the world, and with the exception of her 
daily bath, she renounces every luxury of the 
toilet, and succeeds in condensing into two years 
the work of seven. One day Julian tells her that 
she must work alone, "because," he says, "you 
have learned all that it is possible to teach." 



1 66 Six Modern Women 



III 



Marie Bashkirtseff was not born an artist, with 
that stern predestination with which nature deter- 
mines the career of persons with one talent. If 
her voice had not been destroyed during its 
development, she would in all probability have 
become one of those great singers whose charm 
lies not only in the outward voice, but in the 
indescribable fascination of a deep, strong indi- 
viduality. Her journal, especially the first part, 
reveals an authoress with a rare psychological 
intuition, an understanding of human nature, a 
deep sympathy, a mastery of expression, and an 
early-matured genius, which are unsurpassed even 
among Russians, well known for the richness of 
their temperament. If this young woman, whose 
short life was consumed by a craving for love, 
had gained the experience she so greatly desired, 
where would the woman be found who could have 
borne comparison with her? Who like her was 
created to receive the knowledge whereby a 
woman is first revealed to herself, and is devel- 
oped into the being who is earth's ruler, — the 
great mother, on whose lap man reposes, and from 
whence he goes forth into the world? All that 
she had was original ; it was all of the best mate- 
rial that the earth has to give; and therein lay 
the mystery of her downfall. 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 167 

The backbone of her nature was that indom- 
itable pride whereby a great character reveals 
the consciousness of its own importance. The 
lioness cannot wed with the house-dog. The same 
instinct which, in animals, marks the boundary 
line between the different species, determines in 
a still higher degree — higher far than the mate- 
rialistic wisdom of our schools will allow — the 
attractions and antipathies of love. The iron 
law which compels healthy natures to preserve 
their distinction, prevented this girl from sink- 
ing to the level of the men of her own class, 
amongst whom she might have found some to 
love her. She tried it more than once, but it did 
not answer. Her exceptionable nature required 
a husband superior to herself. One or two such 
men might be found nowadays, who not only as 
productive minds, but also in the subtle charm 
of their manly characters, would have been the 
born masters of an enchantress such as Marie 
Bashkirtseff. But these men are not to be met 
with in the drawing-rooms and studios of Paris, 
nor yet in the Bois de Boulogne ; not in St. Peters- 
burg either, nor on the family estates of Little 
Russia, and she never got to know them. 

This woman, who was born to become a great 
singer, a great painter, a great writer, born — ■ 
before all else — to be loved with a great love, 
never learned to know love, and died without 
being great in any way, because she was en- 
chained all her life long to that which was 



1 68 Six Modern Women 

greater than all her possibilities, — a young girl's 
infinite ignorance. 

In spite of all the knowledge that she had 
acquired, in spite of all the probings of her sen- 
sitive nerves and sharp intellect, she remained 
always and in everything incomplete. It is one 
of the results of the incompleteness of which 
unmarried women are the victims, that they seek 
everywhere the complete, the perfected in man, — 
i.e., they seek for that which is only to be found 
in men who are growing old, and have nothing 
more to give; in whom there are no slumbering 
ambitions, and no hidden aspirations. She must 
have passed by, unheeding, many a young genius, 
who perhaps went to an inferior woman to satisfy 
the passion which might have proved to both of 
them an endless source of blessedness, health, 
and regeneration. She must have felt many a 
look rest upon her, arousing sensations which, to 
her white soul, were a mystery. For this girl, 
who had drunk deeply of the literature of her 
time, and who knew theoretically everything that 
there was to know, was yet unspoiled by a single 
trace of premature knowledge. The pages of her 
journal are innocent from beginning to end, — an 
innocence that is stupid while it is touchingly 
intact. Marie Bashkirtseff's journal is not merely 
a contribution to the psychology of girls, it is a 
young girl's psychology in the widest, most typi- 
cal sense, — the psychology of the unmarried 
state, bequeathed by one who is ignorant to those 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 169 

who know, as her only memorial upon earth, but 
a memorial that will last longer than marble or 
bronze. She died young, but she had no wish to 
die. She took twelve years to write this book, 
and she wrote it on her travels, in the midst of 
her pleasures, in the midst of her work, in the 
despair of her loneliness, and in her fear when 
she shrank from death ; she wrote it during 
sleepless nights, and on days passed in blessed 
abstraction in the beauties of nature. She always 
addressed the unknown hearers who were ever 
present to her imagination ; she spoke to them so 
that, in case she should die young, she might live 
upon earth in the memory of the strangers who 
happened to read her journal. A "human docu- 
ment," by a young girl, she thought, must be of 
sufficient interest not to be forgotten, and she 
promises to tell us everything connected with 
her little person. "All, all, — not only all her 
thoughts, but she will not even hide what is 
laughable and disadvantageous to herself; for 
what would be the object of a book like this, 
unless it told the truth absolutely, accurately, 
and without concealment?" 

The confessions are by no means a human doc- 
ument in the sense that her three patron saints — 
Zola, Maupassant, and Goncourt — would have 
used the word. They do not contain a single 
naked reality. They are modest, not only with 
the modesty of a child of nature, but with the 
modesty of a young hot-house beauty, a deli- 



170 Six Modern Women 

cate lady of fashion, beneath whose snow-white 
resplendent dress — the work of a Parisian dress- 
maker — are concealed the bleeding wounds and 
the pitiless signs of death. But she lets us fol- 
low her from the rich beginnings of her youth 
onwards, until the stream of life trickles away 
drop by drop, leading us on to the weary resig- 
nation of her last days. 

This exhaustion begins to show itself imme- 
diately after the two years of reckless overwork 
and study in Julian's studio; but the cause of it 
was mental rather than physical. Julian's last 
words were : " You have learned all that it is pos- 
sible to teach — the rest depends upon yourself." 
And Robert-Fleury, the principal academical pro- 
fessor, nodded his approval. After that they left 
her. But where was she to begin ? Where was 
the rest to come from ? What was she to do — 
she, who had been such a phenomenal pupil? 
How was she to obtain sufficient individuality 
for original production? Learn! yes, of course. 
A girl can do that better than the most painstak- 
ing young man of the faculty. There is nothing 
to prevent it; her sex will slumber as long as 
the brain is kept at work. But artistic produc- 
tion is another matter. Whence should it come? 
Not from herself, for she has nothing; she has 
had no experience. She can represent what she 
has seen, or she can imagine, but that is all. 
Marie's nature was too truthful to be satisfied 
with imitation. The old academical art did not 



A Young GirVs Tragedy 171 

appeal to her, as was very natural, and the new 
was just bursting its shell, and contained all the 
impurity and rubbish that belongs to a state of 
transition. The imperfect in her desired the 
perfect ; she who was an incomplete woman felt 
the need of a perfected man. 

She made no progress. She painted at home 
from models, and she went out driving with her 
maid, accompanied by some young Russian 
friends, and sketched street scenes from the car- 
riage. So great was her need for ideas that she 
attempted pictures on religious and historical 
subjects, and with some difficulty she finished a 
picture for the next Salon, — went half mad with 
empty pride, but had to admit that it was very 
much inferior to the former one which she had 
painted under Julian's supervision. For two 
years she meets with no success. Her pictures 
contain nothing that is characteristic; she has 
no individual style, no personal experiences, and 
no original ideas. But her individuality, though 
dormant, is too strong to allow her to imitate 
the style of other lady artists, one half of whom 
are too amateurish, and their painting too de- 
void of character, to content her, while the others 
have betrayed their sex, and adopted a severe, 
masculine style. 

At last the day came when Bastien Lepage was 
a public celebrity. Marie Bashkirtseff saw his 
pictures, became his pupil, worshipped him, and 
ever after sang his praises. 



172 Six Modern Women 

Yet, in all this, there was something lacking. 

His bright coloring, and the atmosphere of 
his landscapes, with their pale, sultry heat, the 
aggressive physical character of his people, etc., 
— all these points appealed strongly to her South- 
Russian nature. He set free her national feelings, 
which had hitherto been bound and suppressed 
beneath academical influences, and she discovered 
a kindred spirit in him, a primitive element at 
the root of his being, which made her tenderly 
disposed towards him. But she had no intention 
of remaining his pupil. She was too deeply con- 
scious of the difference between them, and saw 
clearly that his influence was not likely to be 
more than a passing phase. 

She worshipped him from a long-suppressed 
desire to worship some one, but her worship was 
calm and passionless. This little Bastien Lepage 
was not the man to arouse her deepest affections; 
he was too bourgeois, and his fine art was too 
tame. 

And yet she praised him, half mechanically. 
Saint Marceaux, the sculptor, had appealed to 
her feelings more deeply than he had done. 

There was a reason for it. There was a strong 
tie between these two beings, who seemed only 
destined to exert a passing influence over one 
another. 

They were both ill when they made each other's 
acquaintance: life, with its deceptive pleasures, 
had ruined the health of Bastien Lepage; and 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 173 

Marie Bashkirtseff was ill from want of life, — 
her youth, her beauty, her vitality, had all been 
wasted. 

It is the usual fate of the cultured young 
people of our time: he comes to her ruined, 
because he has satiated his thirst ; she comes to 
him ruined, because her thirst has never been 
satisfied. 

They are as far apart as two separate worlds, 
and they do not understand one another. 

The development of the last few years, through 
which Marie Bashkirtseff had passed before she 
met Bastien Lepage, had brought her and the 
readers of her journal nothing but pain and 
dulness. 

What with ambitious plans for artistic work, 
and the life with her family, — which resembled 
a convent more than anything else, interrupted 
by occasional smart dinners, balls, and various 
projects of worldly marriages, which came to 
nothing, — Marie Bashkirtseff had become super- 
ficial and almost stupid. Her genius appeared 
to have flown, and a sickly, blasee hot-house 
plant, solely occupied with herself, was all that 
remained of her. She was like the ordinary girl 
of good family, who has grown rather disagree- 
able, and is no longer quite young, who is still 
ignorant of most things, and becomes extremely 
tiresome by chattering on subjects which she 
does not understand. All this is changed after 
her meeting with Bastien Lepage. 



i74 Six Modern Women 

She regains her youth in a wonderful way ; she 
becomes shy and easily bewildered. When he 
pays his first visit she gets quite confused, turns 
back three times before entering the drawing- 
room, and cannot think of anything to say after 
they have shaken hands. But he, with his un- 
affected manner, and little insignificant person, 
soon succeeds in putting her at her ease. The 
long tirades in her journal come to an end at 
last, and are followed by short, cautious, but very 
expressive sentences. 

Bastien Lepage is anything but a lover. His 
manner is straightforward and simple, and he 
holds himself strikingly aloof, maybe for want 
of practice in the art of love-making, or perhaps 
out of sheer weariness. 

When he leaves her, she becomes as vain and 
egotistical as before; but when he is there she 
watches his every movement with a still, calm 
joy. 

She had been ill for several years. One lung 
was affected, and now the other followed suit; 
she also suffered from deafness, and that troubled 
her more than anything else. She had never 
given a thought to her health. 

When Bastien is there, all is well. She is 
always able to hear what he says, and in his eyes 
she is always pretty ; her art takes a new turn, 
and inspired by him she becomes original. The 
result is the picture in the Luxembourg, called 
"A Meeting," besides several very good por- 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 175 

traits. There is no question of love between 
them; he is never anything but the artist, and 
her old coquettish manner vanishes. She has 
a peculiarly tender affection for him, and the 
development from a self-centred girl to a full- 
grown woman is accomplished within her. 

He suddenly becomes violently and hopelessly 
ill. He is seized with violent pains, followed by 
the cramp, and his legs are paralyzed. 

The green bud of her love withers without 
ever having blossomed. But as his illness grows 
worse, his longing to have Marie always beside 
him increases. When he is sufficiently free from 
pain to go out driving, he gets his brother to 
carry him up to her; and at other times she comes 
with her mother to visit him. It is quite a little 
idyl. His mother, a worthy woman of the work- 
ing-class, cooks his soup; while her mother, who 
is a smart lady, cuts his hair, which has grown 
too long, and his brother, the architect, crops his 
beard. After their united efforts he looks as 
handsome as ever, and no longer so ill. Then 
Marie must sit by his bedside, while he turns his 
back upon the others and looks only at her, — and 
speaks of art. 

It is September, 1884. Marie coughs and 
coughs. Bastien is getting worse and worse, 
and he cannot bear her to leave him, even while 
he is undergoing his worst paroxysms of pain. 
On the 1st of October she writes in her journal : 

" Tant de degoilt et tant de tristesse ! 



176 Six Modern Women 

" What is the use of writing? 

" Bastien Lepage is getting worse and worse. 

" And I cannot work. 

"My picture will not be finished. 

"Alas! Alas! 

" He is dying and suffers a great deal. When 
one is with him, one seems to have left the world 
behind. He is already beyond our reach, and 
there are days when the same feeling comes over 
me. I see people, they talk, and I answer; but 
I seem to be no longer on the earth, — a quiet 
indifference, not painful, almost like an opium 
dream. And he is dying ! I go there more from 
habit than anything else; he is a shadow of his 
former self, and I, too, am scarcely more than a 
shadow ; what is the good of it all ? 

"He is hardly conscious of my presence now; 
there is little use in going; I have not the power 
to enliven him. He is contented to see me, and 
that is all. 

"Yes, he is dying, and it is all the same to 
me; I do not take myself to account for it; it is 
something that cannot be helped. 

" Besides, what difference does it make ? 

"All is over. 

"In 1885 they will bury me." 

In that she was mistaken, for she died the 
same month. Until the last few days Bastien 
Lepage had himself carried up to her; and she, 
shaken by the fever of the last stage of consump- 
tion, had her bed moved into the drawing-room, 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 177 

where she could receive him. There, by her 
bedside, as she had formerly sat beside his, with 
his legs resting upon a cushion, he remained 
until the evening. They scarcely spoke; they 
were together, and that was all they cared for. 
And she, who ever since her first awakening con- 
sciousness had yearned so passionately and so 
impatiently for permission to live her life, died 
now, silent, resigned, without a murmur; and 
knowing that the end was near, she was great in 
death, since she had not succeeded in being great 
in her short life. 



IV 

What remained of her? A book of a thousand 
pages, of which, in ten years, nearly ten thousand 
copies were sold, which Andre Theuriet provided 
with an introductory poem written in his best 
style, and to which Maurice Barres dedicated an 
altar built by himself and sanctified a rather mis- 
taken Marie Bashkirtseff cult. There was also 
"A Meeting " in the Luxembourg, which, accord- 
ing to Marie Bashkirtseff' s own report, Bastien 
Lepage criticised as follows : " He says that it is 
comparatively easy to do choses canailles, peasants, 
street urchins, and especially caricatures ; but to 
paint beautiful things, and to paint them with 
character, — there is the difficulty." 

In order to complete the sketch of this girl, in 



178 Six Modern Women 

which I have tried especially to accentuate the 
typical element, I should like to let her speak for 
herself, with her characteristic expressions, her 
impulsive views and peculiar temperament. 

At the age of thirteen, she writes : — 

" My blood boils, I am quite pale, then sud- 
denly the blood rises to my head, my cheeks 
burn, my heart beats, and I cannot remain quiet 
anywhere; the tears burn within me, I force them 
back, and that only makes me more miserable; 
all this undermines my health, ruins my char- 
acter, makes me irritable and impatient. One 
can always see it in a person's face, whether 
they take life quietly. As for me, I am always 
excited. When they deprive me of my time for 
learning, they rob me for the whole of my life. 
When I am sixteen or seventeen, my mind will 
be occupied with other thoughts; now is the 
time to learn." 

And afterwards, with a depth of understanding 
worthy of Nietzsche : — 

" All that I say is not original, for I have no 
originality. I live only outside myself. To walk 
or to stand still, to have or not to have, it is 
all the same to me. My sorrows, my joys, my 
troubles do not exist. ..." 

And again : — 

" I want to live faster, faster, fast, ... I am 
afraid it is true that this longing to live with the 
speed of steam foretells a short life. ..." 

"Would you believe it? To my mind every- 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 179 

thing is good and beautiful, even tears, even 
pain. I like to cry, I like to be in despair, 
I like to be sad. I like life, in spite of all. I 
want to live. I long for happiness, and yet I 
am happy when I am sad. My body cries and 
shrieks; but something in me, which is above 
me, enjoys it all." 

Then this simile, drawn with wonderful 
delicacy: — 

" At every little sorrow my heart shrinks into 
itself, not for my own sake, but out of pity — I 
do not know whether anybody will understand 
what I mean — every sorrow is like a drop of ink 
that falls into a glass of water; it cannot be 
obliterated, it unites itself with its predecessors 
and makes the clear water gray and dirty. You 
may add as much water as you like, but nothing 
will make it clear again. My heart shrinks into 
itself, because every sorrow leaves a stain on my 
life, and on my soul, and I watch the stains 
increasing in number on the white dress which 
I ought to have kept clean." 

At the age of fourteen she wrote these prophetic 
words : — 

"Oh! how impatient I am. My time will 
come; I believe it, yet something tells me that 
it will never come, that I shall spend the whole 
of my life waiting, always waiting. Waiting 
. . . waiting!" 

When she was sixteen, at the time of the inci- 
dent with the cardinal's nephew: — 



180 Six Modern Women 

" If I am as pretty as I think, why is it that no 
one loves me? People look at me! They fall in 
love ! But they do not love me ! And I do so 
want to be loved." 

At seventeen, the first entry in her journal for 
that year : — ■ 

" When shall T get to know what this love is of 
which we hear so much ? " 

Later on : — 

"Very much disgusted with myself. I hate 
all that I do, say, and write. I despise myself, 
because not a single one of my expectations has 
been fulfilled. I have deceived myself. 

" I am stupid, I have no tact, and I never had 
any. I thought I was intellectual, but I have no 
taste. I thought I was brave ; I am a coward. I 
believed I had talent, but I do not know how 
I have proved it." 

At the age of eighteen : — 

" My body like that of an antique goddess, my 
hips rather too Spanish, my breast small, per- 
fectly formed, my feet, my hands, my child-like 
head. A quoi bon ? When no one loves me. 

"There is one thing that is really beautiful, 
antique: that is a woman's self-effacement in 
the presence of the man she loves; it must be 
the greatest, most self-satisfying delight that a 
superior woman can feel." 

In 1882, at the beginning of her illness: — 

"So I am consumptive, and have been so for 
the last two or three years. It is not yet bad 



A Young Girl's Tragedy 181 

enough to die of it. . . . Let them give me ten 
years longer, and in these ten years, fame or love, 
and I shall die contented, at the age of thirty." 

The following year : — 

" No, I never was in love, and I never shall be 
any more ; a man would have to be very great to 
please me now, I require so much. . . . 

"And simply to fall in love with a handsome 
boy, — no, it would not answer. Love could no 
longer wholly occupy me now; it would be. a 
matter of secondary importance, a decoration to 
the building, an agreeable superfluity. The idea 
of a picture or a statue keeps me awake for nights 
together, which the thought of a handsome man 
has never done." 

In another place : — 

"Whom shall I ask? Who will be truthful? 
Who will be just ? 

"You, my only friend, you at least will be 
truthful, for you love me. Yes, I love myself, 
myself only." 

Two weeks before her death, after a visit from 
Bastien Lepage : — 

" I was dressed entirely in lace and plush, all 
white, but different kinds of white; Bastien 
Lepage opened his eyes wide with joy. 

" ' If only I could paint ! ' he said. 

"'And I!' 

" Obliged to give it up, — the picture for this 
year!" 



1 82 Six Modern Women 

Her portrait represents the face of a typical 
beauty of Little Russia; the firm, dark eye- 
brows, arched over eyes that are far apart, give 
the face an expression that is peculiarly honest 
and straightforward. The eyes gaze fixedly and 
dreamily into the distance; the nose is short, 
with nostrils slightly distended, the mouth soft 
and determined, with the upper lip passionately 
compressed. The face is round as a child's, and 
the neck short and powerful, on a squarely built, 
fully developed body. 



VI 

The Woman's Rights Woman 



The latter half of our century is comparatively 
poor in remarkable women. Nowadays, when 
women are more exacting than they used to be, 
they are of less importance than of old. We 
have rows of women artists, women scientists, 
and authoresses ; the countries of Europe are 
overrun with them, but they are all mediocrities; 
and in the upper classes, although there are 
plenty of eccentric ladies, they are abnormities, 
not individuals. The secret of a woman's power 
has always lain in what she is, rather than in 
what she does, and that is where the women of 
to-day appear to be strangely lacking. They do 
all kinds of things, they study and write books 
without number, they collect money for various 
objects, they pass examinations and take degrees, 
they hold meetings and give lectures, they start 
societies, and there never was a time when women 
lived a more public life than at present. Yet, 
with all that, they are of less public importance 
than they used to be. Where are the women 
whose drawing-rooms were filled with the greatest 
thinkers and most distinguished men of their 
day ? They do not exist. Where are the women 



1 86 Six Modern Women 

with delicate tact, who took part in the affairs of 
the nation? They are a myth. Where are the 
women whose influence was acknowledged to be 
greater than the counsel of ministers? Where 
are the women whose love is immortalized in 
the works of the greatest poets ? Where are the 
women whose passionate devotion was life and 
joy to man, bearing him on wings of gladness 
towards the unknown, and leading him back to 
the beautiful life on earth? They have been, 
but where are they now? The more that woman 
seeks to exert her influence by main force, the 
less her influence as an individual ; the more she 
imbues this century with her spirit, the fewer 
her conquests as woman. Her influence on the 
literature of the eighties has shown itself in an 
intense, ingrained hatred. It is she who has 
inspired man to write his hymn of hatred to 
woman, — Tolstoi in the "Kreutzer Sonata," 
Strindberg in a whole collection of dramas, 
Huysman in "En Menage," while many a lesser 
star is sceptical of love ; and in the writings of 
the younger authors, where this scepticism is not 
so apparent, we find that they understand noth- 
ing at all about women. It is a peculiar sign of 
the times that, in spite of the many restrictions 
of former days, men and women never have stood 
wider apart than at present, and have never 
understood one another more badly than now. 
The honest, unselfish sympathy, the true, I should 
like to say organical union, which is still to be 



The Woman's Rights Woman 187 

observed in the married life of old people, seems 
to have vanished. Each goes his or her own way; 
there may be a nervous search for each other 
and a short finding, but it is soon followed by a 
speedy losing. Is it the men who are to blame ? 
The men of former days were doubtless very 
different, but in their relations to women they 
were scarcely more sociable than at present. 

Or is it the women who are at fault? For some 
time past I have watched life in its many phases, 
and I have come to the conclusion that it is the 
woman who either develops the man's character 
or ruins it. His mother, and the woman to whom 
he unites himself, leave an everlasting mark upon 
the impressionable side of his nature. 

In most cases the final question is not, What 
is the man like? but, What kind of a woman is 
she ? And I think that the answer is as follows : 
A woman's actions are more reasonable than they 
used to be, and her love is also more reasonable. 
The consequence is a lessening of the passion 
that is hers to give, which again results in a 
corresponding coolness on the part of the man. 
The modern system of educating girls by teach- 
ing them numerous languages, besides many other 
branches of knowledge, encourages a superficial 
development of the understanding, and renders 
women more exacting, without making them more 
attractive; and while the average level of intelli- 
gence among women is raised, and the self-conceit 
of the many largely increased, the few who are 



1 88 Six Modern Women 

original characters will in all probability disap- 
pear beneath the pressure of their own sex, and 
in consequence of the apathy which governs the 
mutual relations of both sexes. 

The age in which we live has produced another 
class of women in their stead, who, since they 
represent the strongest majority, must be reckoned 
as the type. It is natural that they should have 
neither the influence nor the fascination of the 
older generation, and they are not as happy. 
They are neither happy themselves, nor do they 
make others happy; the reason is that they are 
less womanly than the others were. From their 
midst the modern authoresses have gone forth, 
women who in days to come will be named in 
connection with the progress of culture; and I 
think that Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess 
of Cajanello, will long be remembered as the most 
characteristic representative of the type. 

II 

She was the supporter of a movement that origi- 
nated with her, and ceased when she died. She 
was known in countries far beyond her native 
Sweden; her books were read and discussed all 
over Germany, and her stories were published in 
the Deutsche Rundschau. She had a clearer brain 
than most women writers; she could look reality 
in the face without being afraid, and indeed she 
was not one who was easily frightened. She was 



The Woman's Rights Woman 189 

very independent, and understood the literary side 
of her calling as well as its practical side, and her 
struggles were by no means confined to her writ- 
ings. She threw aside the old method of seeking 
to gain her ends by means of womanly charm ; she 
wanted to convince as a woman of intellect. She 
condemned the old method which used to be con- 
sidered the special right of women, and fought 
for the new right, i.e., recognition as a human 
being. All her arguments were clear and tem- 
perate; she was not emotional. The minds from 
which she fashioned her own were Spencer and 
Stuart Mill. Nature had endowed her with a 
proud, straightforward character, and she was 
entirely free from that affected sentimentality 
which renders the writings of most women 
unendurable. 

In the course of ten years she became cele- 
brated throughout Europe, and she died suddenly 
about six months after the birth of her first child. 
Sonia Kovalesky, the other and greater European 
celebrity, who was Professor of Mathematics, and 
her most intimate friend, also died suddenly, as 
did several others, — Victoria Benediktson (Ernst 
Ahlgren), her fellow-countrywoman, and for many 
years her rival ; Adda Ravnkilde, a young Danish 
writer, who wrote several books under her influ- 
ence; and a young Finnish authoress named 
Thedenius. The last three died by their own 
hands; Sonia Kovalevsky and Fru Edgren- Lefrler 
died after a short illness. 



190 Six Modern Women 

Fru Leffler was the eldest, — she lived to be 
forty-three ; the others died younger, — the last two 
very much younger. But they all made the same 
attempt, and they all failed. They wanted to 
stand alone, they demanded their independence, 
they tried to carry into practice their views with 
regard to man. 

George Sand made the same attempt, and she 
succeeded. But then her independence took a 
very different form from theirs. She followed 
the traditions of her family, and set no barriers 
to love ; she drank of the great well of life until 
she had well-nigh exhausted it. She was quite 
a child of the old regime in her manner of life. 
The efforts made by these other women, at the 
close of the nineteenth century, took the form of 
wishing to dispense with man altogether. It is 
this feature of Teutonic chastity, bounding on 
asceticism, that was the tragic moment in the 
lives of all these short-lived women. 

It is a strange piece of contemporary history of 
which I am about to write. It is this that is the 
cause of the despondent mood peculiar to the last 
decade of our century; it is this that acts as a 
weight upon our social life, that makes our leisure 
wearisome, our joys cold. It is this decay in 
woman's affection that is the greatest evil of the 
age. 

One of the tendencies of the time is the crav- 
ing for equality, which seeks to develop woman's 
judgment by increasing her scientific knowledge. 



The Woman's Rights Woman 191 

It might have answered from the woman's point 
of view, so far, at least, as the man was con- 
cerned, for it does not much matter to a woman 
whom she loves, as long as she loves some one. 
But women have become so sensible nowadays 
that they refuse to love without a decisive guar- 
antee, and this calculating spirit has already 
become to them a second nature to so great an 
extent that they can no longer love, without first 
taking all kinds of precautionary measures to 
insure their future peace and comfortable main- 
tenance, to say nothing of the unqualified regard 
which they expect from their husbands. 

All things are possible from a state of mind 
such as we have described, except love, and love 
cannot flourish upon it. If there is a thing for 
which woman is especially created, — that is, 
unless she happens to be different from other 
women, — it is love. • A woman's life begins and 
ends in man. It is he who makes a woman of 
her. It is he who creates in her a new kind of 
self-respect by making her a mother ; it is he who 
gives her the children whom she loves, and to 
him she owes their affection. The more highly 
a woman's mind and body are developed, the less 
is she able to dispense with man, who is the 
source of her great happiness or great sorrow, but 
who, in either case, is the only meaning of her 
life. For without him she is nothing. 

The woman of to-day is quite willing to enjoy 
the happiness which man brings, but when the 



192 Six Modern Women 

reverse is the case, she refuses to submit. She 
thinks that, with a little precaution, she can 
bring the whole of life within the compass of a 
mathematical calculation. But before she has 
finished her sum, and proved it to see if it is 
correct, happiness and sorrow have flown past her, 
leaving her desolate and forsaken, — hardened for 
want of love, miserable in spite of a cleverly cal- 
culated marriage, and imbittered in the midst of 
joyless ease and sorrow unaccounted for. 

Such was the fate of these five short-lived 
authoresses, although they might not have de- 
scribed it as I have done. Anne Charlotte 
Edgren-Leffler was chief among the Scandinavian 
women's rights women who have made for them- 
selves a name in literature. Her opinions were 
scattered abroad among thousands of women in 
Germany and in the North, and as she died with- 
out being able to dig up the seed which she had 
sown, she will always be considered as a type of 
the Jin de sikcle woman, and will remain one of its 
historical characters. 

I write this sketch in the belief that it will not 
be very unlike the one she would have written of 
herself, had she lived long enough to do so. 

Ill 

Anne Charlotte Leffler was born at Stock- 
holm, and, like all her townsfolk, she was tall, 
strong, and somewhat angular. She was by 



The Woman's Rights Woman 193 

nature cold and critical, and in this respect she 
did not differ from the women of North Sweden. 
The daughter of a college rector, she had received 
a thoroughly good education, and was probably far 
better educated than the majority of women, as 
she grew up in the companionship of two brothers, 
who were afterwards professors. 

When she was nineteen years of age, she pub- 
lished her first work, a little play, in two acts, 
called " The Actress. " The piece describes the 
struggle between love and talent, and the scene is 
laid in the rather narrow sphere of a small coun- 
try town. The characters are decidedly weak, but 
not more so than one would naturally expect from 
the pen of an inexperienced girl of the upper 
class. There was nothing to show that it was 
the work of a beginner. Her faculty for observa- 
tion is extraordinarily keen, her descriptions of 
character are terse, striking, and appropriate, and 
the construction of the piece is clever. It shows 
a thoughtful mind, and there is none of the clumsy 
handling noticeable in young writers; the con 
flict is carefully thought out, and described with 
mathematical clearness. But however ornate an 
author's style, however remarkable her intellect, 
these qualities do not form the most important 
part of her talent as a woman and an authoress. 
In considering the first book of a writer who after- 
wards became celebrated throughout Europe, the 
question of primary importance is this : How much 
character is revealed in this book ? 

13 



194 Six Modern Women 

Or, to put the question with greater precision, 
since it concerns a woman : How much character 
is there that the author was not able to suppress ? 

The sky seems colored with the deep glow of 
dawn; it is the great expectancy of love. Here 
we have the writing of a young girl who knows 
nothing about love except the one thing, — that it 
is a woman's whole existence. She has never 
experienced it, but her active mind has already 
grasped some of its difficulties; and one great 
difficulty, which must not be overlooked, is the 
>ourgeois desire to maintain a sure footing. An 
actress is going to marry into a respectable middle 
class family. Nobody in this section of society 
can think of love otherwise than clad in a white 
apron and armed with a matronly bunch of keys. 
Love here means the commonplace. The actress 
is accustomed to a worse but wider sphere; love 
for her means to become a great actress, to attain 
perfection in her art, but to her intended it means 
that she should love him and keep house. 

The problem does not often present itself like 
this in real life, and if it did the result would in 
all probability be very different ; in the imagina- 
tion of a well-bred girl of eighteen, like Anne 
Charlotte Leffler, it was the only conclusion pos- 
sible. And as he will not consent to her wishes, 
and she refuses to give way to his; as he has no 
desire to marry an actress, and she no intention of 
becoming a housewife, they separate with mutual 
promises of eternal platonic love. 



The Woman's Rights Woman 195 

The end is comic, But it is meant to be taken 
seriously. No matter how it begins, the ordinary 
woman's book always ends with platonic love; and 
it is very characteristic of Anne Charlotte Leffler 
that her first play should have a platonic and not 
a tragic ending. 

The tragic element, which generally assumes 
supernatural proportions in the imagination of the 
young, did not appeal to her; her life was placed 
in comfortable, bourgeois surroundings, and she 
was perfectly contented with it. 

We find the same want of imagination in all the 
Swedish authoresses, from Fru Lenngren, Frede- 
rica Bremer, and Fru Flygare-Carlen onwards. 

A few years later Anne Charlotte LefBer wrote 
a three-act play, called "The Elf," of which the 
two first acts afford the best possible key to her 
own psychology. It was acted for the first time 
in 1 88 1, but it was probably written soon after 
her marriage, in 1872, with Edgren, who was at 
that time in the service of the government. 



IV 



Fru Edgren was one of those proud, straight- 
forward women who would never dream of allow- 
ing any one to commiserate them. She made no 
attempt to suit her actions to please the world ; 
her sole ambition was to show herself as she 
really was. When she wished to do a thing, she 



196 Six Modern Women 

did it as quickly as possible, and without any one's 
help. She wrote under the influence of her per- 
sonal impressions, her personal judgment, and her 
personal opinions; whatever she might attain to 
in the future, she was determined to have no one 
but herself to thank for it. But she was a woman. 
Though usually possessed of a clear judgment, 
she did not sufficiently realize what it means for 
a woman to enter upon a literary career by her- 
self. She succeeded in her literary career; but in 
doing so she sacrificed the best part of her life, 
and was obliged to suppress her best and truest 
aspirations, thereby destroying a large amount of 
real artistic talent. 

There are few things that afford me more gen- 
uine pleasure than the books of modern authors. 
I enjoy them less on account of what they tell 
me than for that which they have been unable 
to conceal. When they write their books, they 
write the history of their inner life. You open a 
book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone 
and character of those twenty lines you seem to 
feel the beating of the writer's pulse. In the 
same way as a fine musical ear can distinguish a 
single false note in an orchestra, a fine psycho- 
logical instinct can discern the true from the 
false, and can tell where the author describes 
his own feelings and where he is only pretending 
— can discern his true character from among the 
multitude of conscious and unconscious masks, 
and can say: This is good metal, and that a worth- 



The Woman's Rights Woman 197 

less composition, wherewith he makes a dupe of 
himself and of others. 

The woman who attempts to write without a 
man to shield her, to throw a protecting arm 
around her, is an unfortunate, incongruous being. 
That which sets her soul aglow — which calls 
loudly within her — she dare not say. When a 
man wishes to be a great writer, he defies conven- 
tionalism and compels it to become subservient 
to him; but for a lonely woman, conventional- 
ism is her sole support, not only outwardly, but 
inwardly also. It forms a part of her womanly 
modesty; it is the guide of her life, from which 
naught but love can free her; that is why the 
more talented a woman is, the more absolutely 
love must be her pilot. 

Fru Edgren's best play and her two most inter- 
esting stories are "The Elf," "Aurora Bunge," 
and " Love and Womanhood. " None of her other 
works can be said to equal these in depth of feel- 
ing, and none strike a more melancholy note. 
There is an emotional, nervous life in them 
which presents an attractive contrast to the cold 
irony of her other works. She has put her whole 
being into these writings, with something of her 
womanly power to charm; while in the others we 
meet with the clear insight, the critical faculty, 
and the rare sarcasm to which they owe their 
reputation. 

Yet in these three works we notice how very 
much she is hedged in on all sides by conven- 



.198 Six Modern Women 

tionalism. "The Elf," " Love and Womanhood," 
and " Aurora Bunge " make us think of a large 
and beautiful bird that cannot fly because its 
long, swift wings have been broken by a fall 
from the nest. 

The " elf " is the wife of the respected mayor 
of a small country town. Her father was a 
Swedish artist, whose whole life was spent in 
travelling, because every time that he came home 
he was driven away by the narrow social life of 
Sweden. When he is lying on his deathbed, he 
leaves his penniless child to the care of his 
younger friend, the Mayor, who knows no better 
way of providing for her than. by making her his 
wife. He is universally considered the best son, 
the best partner in business, and the best man — 
in the town. The elf wanders about the woods, 
and becomes the subject of much gossip, likewise 
of envy, among the smart ladies of the town. 

One evening when they are giving a party, and 
she forgets to play the part of hostess, their 
neighbor, a Baron, arrives with his sister. Both, 
no longer young, free from illusions, liberal in 
thought and speech, seem to carry with them a 
breath from a bigger world ; their mere presence 
serves to make the elf thoughtlessly happy, and 
from henceforward she sits daily to the Baron for 
a picture representing Undine when the knight 
carries her through the wood, and her soul awakes 
within her. The elf's soul — i.e., love — is also 
awakened. She feels herself drawn towards this 



The Woman's Right's Woman 199 

man, who has sufficient fire to awaken her woman- 
hood with a kiss. She does not wish, she does 
not think, but she would not like to be separated 
from him; he lives in an atmosphere that suits 
her, and in which she thrives. She is still a 
child ; but the child would like to wake. It is 
true that her conscience reproaches her with 
regard to the Mayor, but here the circumstances 
are related as though she were not quite married, 
— that is a mistake which nearly all Teutonic 
authoresses make. 

The Baron tells her the story of Undine. The 
knight finds her at the moment when the brook 
stretches forth his long white arm to draw her 
back, but he does not let her go; he takes her in 
his arms and carries her away, and she looks up 
at him with a half anxious expression — there is 
something new in this expression. She is no 
longer Undine. She loves. She has a soul. 

In this drama, Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, 
the future leader of the woman's rights move- 
ment, makes the confession that a woman's soul 
is — love. She is the only Swedish woman writer 
who would have owned as much. 

The Baron is a decadent. Fru Edgren took 
this type from real life long before the decadence 
made its appearance in literature. He had enjoyed 
all sensations with delight and inner emotion, 
until the woman in the elf opens her eyes in the 
first moment of half consciousness, and when that 
happens she becomes indifferent to him. His 



200 Six Modern IV omen 

passion cools. It is true that his actions still 
tend in the same direction, but he is able to gaze 
at his thoughts critically. He is not the knight 
who lifts Undine out of the cold water. He 
leaves her lying in the brook. 

Among the experiences by means of which 
" independent " women, with a "vocation," awake 
to womanhood, this is probably the most com- 
mon. It is very difficult to define their feelings 
when they realize a change in the man who first 
aroused their affections; but I think that I am 
not far wrong, in saying that it is something akin 
to loathing. The more sensitive the woman, and 
the more innocent she is, the longer the loathing 
will last. Howevep cold her outward behavior 
may appear, the feeling is still there. 

There is nothing that a woman resents more 
keenly than when a man plays with her affections, 
and neglects her afterwards. The more inexperi- 
enced the woman, the more unmanly this behavior 
seems. If she is a true woman, her disappoint- 
ment will be all the greater; she will feel it not 
only with regard to this single individual, but it 
will cast a shadow over all men. 

The last act reveals the author's perplexity. 
From an aesthetic point of view the ending is 
cold, and to a certain extent indifferently exe- 
cuted ; but judged from a psychological point of 
view, it is thoroughly Swedish. Considered as 
the writing of a young lady in the year 1880, it 
must be confessed that the dialogue is tolerably 



The Woman's Rights Woman 201 

strong, even piquante ; but in order to please the 
highly respected public, it is necessary for the 
play to end well. 

Suddenly they one and all — in this land of 
pietism and sudden conversion — beat their breasts 
and confess their sins. The Mayor examines 
himself, and repents that he was selfish enough 
to marry the elf; his mother repents because she 
cared more for her son than her daughter-in-law; 
the elf repents because she almost allowed her- 
self to be betrayed into falling in love; and the 
Baron's sister, who, throughout the piece, has 
always held aloft the banner of love and liberty, 
repents in a general way, without any particular 
reason being given. Thus everything returns to 
its former condition, and Undine remains in the 
duck-pond. 

With this satisfying termination, "The Elf" 
survived a large number of performances. 

The question which suggests itself to my mind 
is : Whether the author intended the piece to end 
in this manner? Or was the original ending less 
conventional, and was Fru Edgren obliged to 
alter it in order that the play might be acted? 
What else could she do? A lonely woman like 
her dared not sin against the public morals. It 
were better to sin against anything else, only 
not against the public morals; for in that case 
they would have condemned her to silence, and 
her career would have been at an end. The key- 
note of the piece was the yearning to escape from 



202 Six Modern Women 

the long Swedish winters and the gossip by the 
fireside, out into the fresh air, into the light and 
warmth of the South. 



V 



Ten years afterwards Fru Edgren returned to 
the same problem in " Love and Womanhood," 
and this time she treated it with greater delicacy 
and more depth of feeling. 

The heroine is no longer the traditional elf, 
but the modern girl, — nervous, sensitive, with a 
sharp intellect and still sharper tongue; she is 
very critical, very reserved, full of secret aspi- 
rations, and very warm-hearted ; her heart is 
capable of becoming a world to the man she 
loves, but it needs a man's love to develop its 
power of loving. She loves an elegant, self- 
satisfied Swedish lieutenant, who has served as a 
volunteer in Algiers, and has written a book on 
military science; he is just an ordinary smart 
young man, and he takes it for granted that she 
will accept him the instant he proposes. But 
she refuses him. He is indignant and hurt ; he 
cannot understand it at all, unless she loves some 
one else. But no, she 'does not love any one 
else. Then what is the reason? She is sure 
that he does not care enough for her; there is 
such an indescribable difference between her love 
for him, or rather the love that she knows herself 



The W ' oman's Rights Woman 203 

capable of feeling, and the affection that he 
has to offer her, that she will not have him on 
any account, and looks upon his proposal almost 
in the light of an insult. He goes away, and 
returns, soon afterwards, engaged to a little 
goose. 

Fru Edgren develops an elaborate theory, to 
which she returns again and again. According 
to her, it is only the commonplace little girls 
of eighteen, innocence in a white pinafore, with 
whom men fall in love. I myself do not think 
that there is much in it : a dozen men who are 
nonentities fall in love with a dozen young 
women who are likewise nonentities. On the 
other hand, we have that numerous type, which 
includes the modern girl, full of soul, originality, 
and depth of character, clever and modest, pos- 
sessed of a keen divination with regard to her 
own feelings and that of others, mingled with a 
chaste pride that is founded upon the conscious- 
ness of her own importance, — a pride that will 
not accept less than it gives. And these girls 
are confined to the narrow circle to which all 
women are reduced, to two pr three possibilities 
in the whole course of their long youth, possi- 
bilities which chance throws in their way, and 
which are perhaps no possibilities at all to them. 
A few years pass by, and these girls have become 
stern judges upon the rights of love, and they 
have developed a bitter expression about the 
mouth, and a secret gnawing in the soul. A 



204 Six Modern Women 

few years more, and this unappreciated womanly 
instinct will have brought them to hate men. 

Fru Edgren went the same way In her 
" Sketches from Life " we find some traces of 
this feeling in the stories where she displays the 
comparative worth of men and women ; take, for 
instance, the tale called " At War with Society." 
But before she had quite joined the army of stern 
judges, she weighed the problem of love once 
more, in the second of her five completed novels, 
called, "Aurora Bunge. " 

For the last ten years Aurora Bunge has been 
chief among the ball beauties of Stockholm. 
Everything in her life is arranged and settled 
beforehand. In the winter she goes to balls, 
night after night, to parties and plays; in the 
summer she is occupied in much the same way 
in a fashionable watering-place. For the last 
ten years she has known exactly with whom she 
is going to dance, what compliments will be paid 
her, what offers she will receive, and whom she 
is eventually going to marry. The marriage can 
be put off until she is thirty — and now she is 
nearly thirty, and the time has come. She is 
one of those girls who have danced and danced 
until everything has grown equally indifferent 
and wearisome to them ; and yet she is without 
experience, and is likely to remain so to the end. 
She allows herself perfect freedom of speech, but 
she will never allow herself a single free action. 
A couple of intrigues in the dim future are not 



The Woman's Rights Woman 205 

entirely excluded from her plans, but what differ- 
ence will that make? She has something of 
Strindberg's "Julie," but without the latter's 
perversity; she is also some years in advance of 
her. She would have no objection to eloping 
with a circus rider, or doing something de tres 
mauvais goilt, but she knows that she will never 
do it. The summer previous to the announce- 
ment of her engagement she is seized with a fit 
of liking the country, and she accompanies her 
mother to one of her properties, which is situated 
on a desolate part of the coast. It is the first of 
her thirty summer visits that is not quite comme 
il fanU In a sudden outburst of enthusiasm for 
nature, she spends days and weeks wandering 
about in the woods and fields, with torn dress 
and down-trodden shoes, and goes out sailing 
with the fishermen. She becomes stronger and 
more beautiful, and is more than ever imbued 
with an indescribable longing. This vague 
longing leads her on towards that which she is 
going to experience — which is to be her life's 
only experience. She feels her pulses beat and 
her heart burn within her, and not till then does 
the matured woman of thirty tear aside the ban- 
dage that binds her eyes; and looking out, she 
cries: Where art thou, who givest me life's ful- 
ness? On one of her boating expeditions, she 
goes to the nearest lighthouse. The lighthouse- 
keeper, a strong, quiet young man, comes out. 
She looks, and she knows that it is he ! 



206 Six Modern Women 

Up to this point Fru Edgren has copied the 
secret writing in her own soul, and every touch 
is true. But her experience went no further. 
The part that follows is psychological and logical 
too, but it has the greatest fault that a romance 
can have; i.e., it is word, for word imagined, 
not experienced, and for this reason it is over- 
drawn. Aurora has scarcely landed before a 
storm sets in. She flutters like an exhausted 
bird, in and out of the narrow lighthouse. The 
lighthouse-keeper sees the danger, and hurries 
down. She wants to throw herself into the 
water. He climbs down the rocks and seizes 
hold of her. Already before, this son of the 
people had found time to give her a love poem 
to read. The storm lasts three days, and for 
three days she remains there. On the fourth 
day the fishermen return to fetch her, and the 
lighthouse-keeper is furious. By this time she 
is no better than a very ordinary fisher girl. She 
is deathly pale, but insists on leaving him. He 
threatens her with his fists, and she proposes 
that they should drown themselves together; but 
his mother had already drowned herself, and he 
does not wish to have two suicides in the family. 
Aurora goes home, and they never meet again. 
A few months afterwards she marries an officer 
who is in debt. 

Fru Edgren's men may be divided into two 
types, — the one she cannot endure, but she 
describes him admirably; the other she cannot 



The Woman's Rights Woman 207 

describe at all, but she likes him very much 
indeed. The first is the fashionable man of 
Stockholm society, who has tasted life's pleas- 
ures, and is wearied of them ; the second is the 
simple, unsophisticated son of the people. 



VI 

Fru Edgren looked life boldly in the face, — 
life, which was continually passing her by, be- 
cause she was a lady, whose duty it was to lead 
a blameless existence. She was by this time a 
celebrated authoress, with a comfortable income, 
but what had she gained by it ? Merely this : 
that envious eyes watched her more narrowly 
than before, and that she was expected to live 
for the honor and glory of Sweden, and for the 
honor and glory of her position as a woman 
writer. Yet, after all, were they not in the 
North? And was she not allowed all possible 
freedom up to a certain point ? Even this cer- 
tain point might be overstepped sometimes, — in 
private, of course, — and such was the general 
usage. But she was one of those proud natures 
who will not tolerate a greasy fingermark on the 
untarnished shield of their honor, and she was 
also one of those sovereign natures whose will 
is a law to themselves. 

We are confronted by a strange sight in Scan- 
dinavian literature. We find man's laxitv and 



208 Six Modern Women 

woman's prudery existing side by side. Bjornson, 
Ibsen, Garborg, Strindberg, were contemporaries 
of Fru Edgren, and their renown was at its 
height. The eighties were the great period of 
Scandinavian romance, and this romance turned 
solely upon the problem of man and woman. 
The productive enthusiasm of those days drove a 
multitude of women into the fields of literature, 
including those whom we have mentioned, who 
died early, and some lesser ones, who still con- 
tinue to lead a useless, literary existence. But 
their writings are strangely poor compared with 
those of the men, even though there were 
numbered amongst them an Edgren- Lefrler, an 
Ahlgren, and a Kovalevsky. The men were not 
afraid; they all had something to impart, and 
that which they imparted was themselves. But 
there was not a single woman's voice to join in 
the mighty chorus of the hymn to love; not one 
of them had experienced it, and they had nothing 
to say. Their longing kept silence. When, how- 
ever, the literature of indignation, with Kalchas 
Bjornson at its head, broke loose against the 
corruptions and depravity of men, then all the 
authoresses raised their voices, and instituted a 
grand inquisition. 

Fru Edgren took part in it. What hymn could 
she sing? She had no experience of love, and 
her patience was at an end. Towards the end 
of the eighties, love had completely vanished 
from her books, and its place had been filled by 



The Woman's Rights Woman 209 

the question of rights, — women's rights with 
regard to property and wage-earning, and mar- 
riage rights. "The Doll's House " was followed 
by a deluge of books on unhappy marriages, and 
Fru Edgren contributed to increase their num- 
ber. In a play called "True Women," she con- 
trasts the hard-working, wage-earning woman 
with the indolent, extravagant man; while she 
severely condemns the woman who so far lowers 
herself as to love a husband who has been un- 
faithful to her. She is, in fact, so badly dis- 
posed towards love that she allows an honest, 
hard-working man, in the same piece, to be 
refused by an honest, hard-working woman, and 
for the simple reason that superior people must 
no longer propose, nor allow others to propose 
to them. 

Her drama, "How People do Good," is written 
in the same mood. " The Gauntlet " and " The 
Doll's House " have exerted such a great influ- 
ence over her that she has unconsciously quoted 
whole sentences. She has become no better than 
the ordinary platform woman; her former sense 
and good taste are no longer to be observed in 
her writings, and even socialism has a place in 
her programme. This woman, who knows noth- 
ing of the proletarian, represents him in a melo- 
dramatic manner, as she has done before with 
the son of the people. She travels about the 
country and fights for her rights; she becomes a 
propagandist. 

14 



210 Six Modern Women 

It was at this time that the celebrated mathe- 
matician, Sonia Kovalevsky, was appointed to 
the high school at Stockholm at the instigation of 
Fru Edgren's brother, Professor Mittag-Leffler, 
and the two women became the greatest of friends. 
Sonia Kovalevsky had practised the principles of 
women's rights and asceticism in her own mar- 
ried life, and was now, after her husband had 
shot himself, a widow. 

She was probably Bjornson's model in more 
than one of his books, and she combined Russian 
fanaticism with the Russian capacity to please. 
She had not been long at Stockholm before 
the war broke 'loose. Strindberg raged against 
women, ignoring Fru Edgren and others on the 
plea that they could not be reckoned as women, 
since they had no children. Bjornson and Fru 
Edgren were everywhere welcomed at women's 
meetings as the champions of women's rights. 

For four or five years Sonia Kovalevsky and Fru 
Edgren were almost inseparable. Fru Edgren 
took back her maiden name of Leffler after her 
separation from her husband. The two friends 
were always travelling. They went to Norway, 
France, England, etc., together, and Fru LefBer 
wrote her longest novel, "A Tale of Summer." 
It was the old problem of love and the artistic 
temperament. A highly gifted artist falls in 
love with a commonplace schoolmaster, — she 
nervous, refined, independent ; he young, big, 
strong, true-hearted, and very like a trusty New- 



The Woman's Rights Woman 211 

foundland dog. It does not answer. An artist 
must not marry, the most learned of Newfound- 
land dogs cannot understand an artist, and yet 
artists have a most unfortunate preference for 
Newfoundland dogs. 

There was something in this novel that was 
not to be found in any of her earlier works, — a 
hasty, uneven beat of the pulse, something of the 
fever of awakened passion. 

Sonia, meantime, was engaged with her work 
for the Prix Bordin; but she had scarcely begun 
her studies before she left, them to devote herself 
to a parallel romance, about which she was very 
much excited. It was called "The Struggle for 
Happiness: How it Was, and How it Might 
Have Been." She persuaded Fru Leffler to give 
this thought a dramatic setting, and she was very 
anxious to have it published. It was nothing 
more or less than a hymn to love, which had fast 
begun to set flame to her ungovernable Russian 
blood. Fru Leffler wrote the piece, but it proved 
an utter failure. 

On her travels she made the acquaintance of 
the Duke of Cajanello, a mathematician, who was 
probably introduced to her by Sonia Kovalevsky. 
He was professor at the Lyceum at Naples, and 
Fru Leffler appears to have fallen suddenly and 
passionately in love. Her last novel bears wit- 
ness to this fact ; like the former one, it treats of 
" Love and Womanhood, " but here the proof of 
true womanliness lies in the loving. She was 



212 Six Modern Women 

divorced from her husband and went to Italy. 
Liberty, love, and the South, — all were hers at 
last. 

She had something else besides to satisfy her 
ambition as a society lady, when, in May, 1890, 
she became the Duchess of Cajanello. After her 
marriage she paid a visit to Stockholm with her 
husband, and every one thought that she looked 
younger, more gentle, more womanly, and happier 
than she had ever done before. 

After the marriage, her friendship with Sonia 
Kovalevsky was at an end. The latter had not 
found happiness in loving, and she died in the 
year 1891. 

The Duchess of Cajanello lived at Naples, and 
in her forty-third year she experienced for the 
first time the happiness of becoming a mother. 
When she died, the little duke was scarcely more 
than six months old. Up to the last few days of 
her life, she was to all appearances happy and in 
good health. Her last work was the life of her 
friend Sonia Kovalevsky. In writing it she ful- 
filled the promise which they had made, that 
whichever of the two survived should write the 
life — a living portrait it was to be — of the other. 
She had just begun to correct the proofs before 
she died. On the last day before her illness, she 
worked till three o'clock in the afternoon at a 
novel called u A Narrow Horizon," which was left 
unfinished. She died after a few days' illness. 



The Woman's Rights Woman 213 

Fru Edgren-Leffler belonged to that class of 
women whose senses slumber long because their 
vital strength gives them the expectation of long 
youth. But when the day comes that they are 
awakened, the same vitality that had kept them 
asleep overflows with an intensity that attracts 
like a beacon on a dark night. It is the woman 
who attracts the man, not the reverse. Fru 
Edgren-Leffler found in her fortieth year that 
which she had sought for in vain in her twen- 
tieth and thirtieth, — love ! The unfruitful be- 
came fruitful; the emaciated became beautiful; 
the woman's rights woman sang a hymn to the 
mystery of love ; and the last short years of hap- 
piness, too soon interrupted by death, were a con- 
tradiction to the long insipid period of literary 
production. 



THE END 



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resemble the world he has left behind, that he believes he is still in the latter 
until convinced of the error. The young man has good impulses, but is no saint, 
and he listens to the persuasions of certain persons who were his friends in the 
world, but who are now numbered among the evil, even to the extent of following 
them downward to the very confines of Hell. Resisting at last and saving him- 
self, later on, and after many remarkable experiences, he gradually makes his way 
through the intermediate region to the gateways of Heaven, — which can be found 
only by those prepared to enter, — where he is left with the prospect before him 
of a blessed eternity in the company of the woman he loves. 

The book is written in a reverential spirit, it is unique and quite unlike any 
story of the same type heretofore published, full of telling incidents and dramatic 
situations, and not merely a record of the doings of sexless "shades" but of 
living human beings. 

The one grand practical lesson which this book teaches, and which is in 
accord with the divine Word and the New Church unfoldings of it everywhere 
teach, is the need of an interior, true purpose in life. The deepest ruling pur- 
pose which we cherish, what we constantly strive for and determine to pursue as 
the most real and precious thing of life, that rules us everywhere, that is our ego, 
our life, is what will have its way at last. It will at last break through all dis- 
guise ; it will bring all external conduct into harmony with itself. If it be an 
evil and selfish end, all external and fair moralties will melt away, and the man 
will lose his common sense and exhibit his insanities of opinion and will and 
answering deed on the surface. But if that end be good and innocent, and there 
be humility within, the outward disorders and evils which result from one's 
heredity or surroundings will finally disappear. — From Rev. John Goddard s 
discourse, July i, 1894. 

Putting aside the question as to whether the scheme of the soul's develop- 
ment after death was or was not revealed to Swedenborg, whether or not the 
title of seer can be added to the claims of this learned student of science, all this 
need not interfere with the moral influence of this work, although the weight of 
its instruction must be greatly enforced on the minds of those who believe in a 
later inspiration than the gospels. 

This story begins where others end ; the title of the first chapter, " I Die," 
commands attention; the process of the soul's disenthralment is certainly in har- 
mony with what we sometimes read in the dim eyes of friends we follow to the 
very gate of life. " By what power does a single spark hold to life so long . 
this lingering of the divine spark of life in a body growing cold? " It is the 
mission of the author to tear from Death its long-established thoughts of horror, 
and upon its entrance into a new life, the soul possesses such a power of adjust- 
ment that no shock is experienced. — Boston Transcript. 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS 



POOR FOLK. 

Translated from the Russian of Fedor Dostoievsky, by 
Lena Milman, with decorative titlepage and a criti- 
cal introduction by George Moore. American 
Copyright edition. 

16 mo. Cloth. $1.00. 



A capable critic writes : " One of the most beautiful, touching stories I have 
read. The character of the old clerk is a masterpiece, a kind of Russian Charles 
Lamb. He reminds me, too, of Anatole France's ' Sylvestre Bonnard,' but it 
is a more poignant, moving figure- How wonderfully, too, the sad little strokes 
of humor are blended into the pathos in his characterization, and how fascinating 
all the naive self-revelations of his poverty become, — all his many ups and downs 
and hopes and fears. His unsuccessful visit to the money-lender, his despair at the 
office, unexpectedly ending in a sudden burst of good fortune, the final despair- 
ing cry of his love for Varvara, — these hold one breathless One can hardly 
read them without tears. . . . But there is no need to say all that could be said 
about the book. It is enough to say that it is over powerful and beautiful." 

We are glad to welcome a good translation of the Russian Dostoievsky's 
story " Poor Folk," Englished by Lena Milman. It is a tale of unrequited love, 
conducted in the form of letters written between a poor clerk and his girl cousin 
whom he devotedly loves, and who finally leaves him to marry a man not admir- 
able in character who, the reader feels, will not make her happy. The pathos of 
the book centres in the clerk, Makar's, unselfish affection and his heart-break at 
being left lonesome by his charming kinswoman whose epistles have been his one 
solace. In the conductment of the story, realistic sketches of middle class Rus- 
sian life are given, heightening the effect of the denoument. George Moore writes 
a sparkling introduction to the book. — Hartford Courant. 

Dostoievsky is a great artist. " Poor Folk " is a great novel. — Boston 
Advertiser. 

It is a most beautiful and touching story, and will linger in the mind long 
after the book is closed. The pathos is blended with touching bits of humor, 
that are even pathetic in themselves. — Boston Times. 

Notwithstanding that "Poor Folk" is told in that most exasperating and 
entirely unreal style — by letters — it is complete in sequence, and the interest 
does not flag as the various phases in the sordid life of the two characters are 
developed. The theme is intensely pathetic and truly human, while its treat- 
ment is exceedingly artistic. The translator, Lena Milman, seems to have well 
irfeserved the spirit of the original — Cambridge Tribune. 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' 1 Publications. 

THE WOMAN WHO DID. 

BY GRANT ALLEN. 

Keynotes Series, American Copyright Edition, 

16mo. Cloth.. Price, $1.00. 



A very remarkable story, which in a coarser hand than its refined and 
gifted author could never have been effectively told ; for such a hand could 
not have sustained the purity of motive, nor have portrayed the noble, 
irreproachable character of Herminia Barton. — Boston Home Journal. 

" The Woman Who Did " is a remarkable and powerful story. It 
increases our respect for Mr. Allen's ability, nor do we feel inclined to join 
in throwing stones at him as a perverter of our morals and our social insti- 
tutions. However widely we may differ from Mr. Allen's views on many 
important questions, we are bound to recognize his sincerity, and to re- 
spect him accordingly. It is powerful and painful, but it is not convincing. 
Herminia Barton is a woman whose nobleness both of mind and of life we 
willingly concede ; but as she is presented to us by Mr. Allen, there is un- 
mistakably a flaw in her intellect. This in itself does not detract from 
the reality of the picture. — The Speaker. 

In the work itself, every page, and in fact every line, contains outbursts 
of intellectual passion that places this author among the giants of the 
nineteenth century. — American Newsman. 

Interesting, and at times intense and powerful. — Buffalo Commercial. 

No one can doubt the sincerity of the author. — Woman's Journal. 

The story is a strong one, very strong, and teaches a lesson that no one 
has a right to step aside from the moral path laid out by religion, the law, 
and society. — Boston Times. 



Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
the Publishers, 

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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

DISCORDS. 

& Volume of Stories. 
By GEORGE EGERTON, author of " Keynotes.' 

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT EDITION. 

i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 



George Egerton's new volume entitled "Discords," a collection of short stones, 
Is more talked about, just now, than any other fiction- of the day. The collection is 
really stories for story- writers. They are precisely the quality which literary folk will 
wrangle over. Harold Frederic cables from London to the " New York Times " that 
the book is making a profound impression there. It is published on both sides, the 
Roberts House bringing it out in Boston. George Egerton, like George Eliot and 
George Sand, is a woman's nom de plume. The extraordinary frankness with which 
life in general is discussed in these stories not unnaturally arrests attention. — 
Lilian lVhiting. 

The English woman, known as yet only by the name of George Egerton, who 
made something of a stir in the world by a volume of strong stories called " Keynotes," 
has brought out a new book under the rather uncomfortable title of " Discords." 
These stories show us pessimism run wild ; the gloomy things that can happen to a 
human being are so dwelt upon as to leave the impression that in the author's owr 
world there is no light. The relations of the sexes are treated of in bitter irony, which 
develops into actual horror as the pages pass. But in all this there is a rugged 
grandeur of style, a keen analysis of motive, and a deepness of pathos that stamp 
George Egerton as one of the greatest women writers of the day. "Discords" has 
been called a volume of stories ; it is a misnomer, for the book contains merely varying 
episodes in lives of men and women, with no plot, no beginning nor ending. —Boston 
Traveller. 

This is a new volume of psychological stories from the pen and brains of George 
Egerton, the author of " Keynotes." Evidently the titles of the author's books are 
selected according to musical principles. The first story in the book is "A Psycho, 
logical Moment at Three Periods." It is all strength rather than sentiment. The 
story of the child, of the girl, and of the woman is told, and told by one to whom the 
•mysteries of the life of each are familiarly known. In their verv truth, as the writer 
has so subtly analyzed her triple characters, they sadden one to think that such things 
must be ; yet as they are real, they are bound to be disclosed by somebody and in due 
time. The author betrays remarkable penetrative skill and perception, and dissects 
the human heart with a power from whose demonstration the sensitive nature ma> 
instinctively shrink even while fascinated with the narration and hypnotized by the 
treatment exhibited. — Courier. 



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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 



2M3ac in €ngli£f>. 



Memoirs of Two Young Married Women. 

By Honore de Balzac. 

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 12 mo. 
Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 



"There are," says Henry James in one of his essays, "two writers In 
Balzac, — the spontaneous one and the reflective one, the former of 
which is much the more delightful, while the latter is the more extraordi- 
nary." It is the reflective Balzac, the Balzac with a theory, whom we 
get in the "Deux Jeunes Mariees," now translated by Miss Wormeley 
under the title of " Memoirs of Two Young Married Women." The 
theory of Balzac is that the marriage of convenience, properly regarded, 
is far preferable to the marriage simply from love, and he undertakes to 
prove this proposition by contrasting the careers of two young girls who 
have been fellow-students at a convent. One of them, the ardent and 
passionate Louise de Chaulieu, has an intrigue with a Spanish refugee, 
finally marries him, kills him, as she herself confesses, by her perpetual 
jealousy and exaction, mourns his loss bitterly, then marries a golden- 
haired youth, lives with him in a dream of ecstasy for a year or so, and 
this time kills herself through jealousy wrongfully inspired. As for hel 
friend, Renee de Maucombe, she dutifully makes a marriage to please her 
parents, calculates coolly beforehand how many children she will have and 
how they shall be trained; insists, however, that the marriage shall be 
merely a civil contract till she and her husband find that their hearts are 
indeed one; and sees all her brightest visions realized, — her Louis an 
ambitious man for her sake and her children truly adorable creatures. 
The siory, which is told in the form of letters, fairly scintillates with 
brilliant sayings, and is filled with eloquent discourses concerning the 
nature of love, conjugal and otherwise. Louise and Renee are both 
extremely sophisticated young women, even in their teens ; and those 
who expect to find in their letters the demure innocence of the Anglo- 
Saxon type will be somewhat astonished. The translation, under the 
circumstances, was rather a daring attempt, but it has been most felicit- 
ously done. — The Beacon. 



Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of 
price by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. Boston'. Mass. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications, 



GEORGE SAND IN ENGLISH, 



NANON. 

Translated by ELIZABETH WORMELEY LATIMER. 



It is, I think, one of the prettiest and most carefully constructed of her later 
works, and the best view of the French Revolution from a rural point of view that 
I know. — Translator. 

** Nanon " is a pure romance, chaste in style and with a charm of sentiment 
well calculated to appeal to the most thoughtful reader. George Sand has chosen 
the epoch of the French Revolution as the scene of this last theme from her pro- 
lific pen, and she invests the time with all the terrible significance that belongs to 
it. To the literary world nothing that comes from her pen is unwelcome, the more 
so as in this instance there is not the least trace of that risky freedom of speech 
that too often disfigures the best work of the French school of fiction. Nanon 
will be read with an appreciation of the gifted novelist that is by no means new, 
and her claim to recognition is made stronger and better by this masterly work. 
Her admirers — and they will be sure not to miss Nanon — will feel a debt of 
gratitude to Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer for a translation that preserves so well 
the clear, flowing style and the lofty thoughts of the original ; and the publishers, 
no less than the reading public, ought to consider themselves fortunate in the 
choice of so competent a translator. — The A merican Hebrew. 

This is among the finest of George Sand's romances, and one who has not 
made acquaintance with her works would do well to choose it as the introductory 
volume. It belongs in the list of the best works of that remarkable author, and 
contains nothing that is objectionable or at all questionable in its moral tone. The 
scenes are laid among the peasantry of France — simple-hearted, plodding, honest 
people, who know little or nothing of the causes which are fomenting to bring 
about the French Revolution. She portrays in clear and forcible language the 
destitute condition of the rural districts, whose people were ignorant, priest-ridden, 
and oppressed ; and she shows the wretchedness and misery that these poor people 
were compelled to endure during the progress of the Revolution. The book is one 
of her masterpieces, by reason of the exquisite delineations of character, the keen 
and philosophical thought, the purity of inspiration, and the delicacy and refine- 
ment of style Throughout the story there is a freshness and vigor which only 
one can feel who has lived at some time in close intimacy with fields and woods, 
and become familiar with the forms, the colors, and the sounds of Nature. The 
book has been translated by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, who has performed her 
task admirably. — Public Opinion. 

Mrs. Latimer has achieved marked success in the translation of this charming 
tale, preserving its purity, its simplicity, and its pastoral beauty. — Christian 
Union. 



One volume, i2mo, half Russia, uniform with our edition of " Balzac" 
and "Sand" novels. Price, $1.50. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



A. Beautiful Betrothal and Wedding Gift. 

THE 

Lover's Year-Book of Poetry. 

A Collection of Love Poems for Every Day in the Year, 
By HORACE P. CHANDLER. 



First Series. Vol. I. January to June. Bicolor, $1.25 ; white and gold, 
$1.50. Vol. II. July to December. Bicolor, $1.25 ; white and gold, $1.50. 

Second Series. Vol. I. January to June. Bicolor, $1.25; white and gold, 
$1.50. Vol. II. July to December. Bicolor, $1.25 ; white and gold, $1.50. 

The Poems in the First Series touch upon Love prior to Marriage ; those 
in the Second Series are of Married-Life and Child-Life. 

These two beautiful volumes, clad in the white garb which is emblematic of 
the purity of married love as well as the innocence of childhood, make up a series 
unique in its plan and almost perfect in jts carrying out. It would be impossible 
to specify any particular poems of the collection for special praise. They have 
been selected with unerring taste and judgment, and include some of the most 
exquisite poems in the language. Altogether the four volumes make up a 
treasure-house of Love poetry unexcelled for sweetness and purity of expression. 
Transcript, Boston. 

Mr. Chandler has drawn from many and diverse wells of English poetry of 
Love, as the list for any month shows. The poetry of passion is not here, but 
there are many strains of Love such as faithful lovers feel. — Literary World, 
Boston. 

We do not hesitate to pronounce it a collection of extraordinary freshness and 
merit. It is not in hackneyed rhymes that his lovers converse, but in fresh 
metres from the unfailing; fountains. — hidependent, New York. 

Mr. Chandler is catholic in his tastes, and no author of repute has been 
omitted who could give variety or strength to the work. The children have never 
been reached in verse in a more comprehensive and connected manner than they 
are in this book. — Gazette, Boston. 

A very dainty and altogether bewitching little anthology. For each day in 
each month of two years (each series covering a year) a poem is given celebrating 
the emotions that beset the heart of the true lover. The editor has shown his 
exquisite taste in selection, and his wide and varied knowledge of the literature of 
English and American poetry. Every poem in these books is a perfect gem of 
sentiment; either tender, playful, reproachful, or supplicatory in its meaning; 
there is not a sonnet nor a lyric that one could wish away. — Beacon, Boston. 

"The selections," says Louise Chandler Moulton, "given us are nearly all 
interesting, and some of them are not only charming but unhackneyed." — 
Herald, Boston. 

A collection of Love poems selected with exquisite judgment from the best 
knowp English and American poets of the last three centuries, with a few trans- 
lations. — Home Journal, Boston. 

There are many beautiful poems gathered into this treasure-house, and so 
great is the variety which has been given to the whole that the monotony which 
would seem to be the necessary accompaniment of the choice of a single theme 
is overcome. — Courier, Boston. 

The selections are not fragments, but are for the most part complete poems 
Nearly every one of the poems is a literary gem, and they represent nearly all 
the famous names in poetry. — Daily Advertiser, Boston. 

Selected with great taste and judgment from a wide variety of sources, and 
providing a body of verse of the highest order. — Commercial Advertiser, 
Buffalo. 



Sold by all booksellers. Mailed on receipt of price, post- 
paid, by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. 



